That’s German for St. Nicolas’ Eve, and in my memory I can hear the children I took care of singing “Lustig, lustig, tra la la la la! Heute ist Nikolaus Abend da!” (Merry, merry, tra la la…today is Nikolaus Eve).
The Count had arranged for St. Nikolaus to actually come to the castle and ask the children to convince him they’d been good enough. I remember watching out the upstairs wiindows of the nursery as we all saw him walk through the entry arch of the castle, followed by Knecht Ruprecht, his rather scary helper, who was said to carry away misbehaving children and to leave them in the forest overnight.
Heilige Nikolaus had a long white beard, wore a white bishop’s gown with a pointed mitre on his head, and carried a long wooden staff. Knecht Ruprecht’s face was blackened with coal dust, and he was bent over, carrying chains, a bundle of twigs, and a bulky burlap bag with something sticking out the top.
The Count let them in. They came upstairs, and as they entered the nursery, the children greeted him; “Guten Abend, Heilige Nikolaus.” The saint pulled a scroll from his robes and addressed the oldest child, reading his misdeeds; pulling his sisters’ hair, being naughty at the table, etc. Ruprecht shook his chains, and then we noticed that feet were sticking out of his sack, and the boots belonged to a known troublemaker. But the saint went on to read of the boy’s good deeds, then asked what he had to say. The child sang a hymn for him.
Each child went through this, then saying a poem or a short prayer. When he got to the toddler, she ignored him, and kept calling out to me….”Ann!” in a perfectly American accent.
When the Count escorted them out again, he found a basket of cookies and a box of small presents had appeared on the doorstep. When those were passed around, I got a nice pair of warm mittens.
You can read the story of my stay in my book, American Governess. Below, the current Count, Carl von Soden-Frauenhofen, holds my book in front of the castle.
Ann Dickinson Sargent 