The Klöpfelnächte.
On the Thursday nights in Advent it is customary in southern Germany for children or grown-up people to go from house [217]to house, singing hymns and knocking on the doors with rods or little hammers, or throwing peas, lentils, and the like against the windows. Hence these evenings have gained the name of Klöpfel or Knöpflinsnächte (Knocking Nights).[{27}] The practice is described by Naogeorgus in the sixteenth century:—
“Three weekes before the day whereon was borne the Lord of Grace,
And on the Thursdaye Boyes and Girles do runne in every place,
And bounce and beate at every doore, with blowes and lustie snaps,
And crie, the Advent of the Lorde not borne as yet perhaps.
And wishing to the neighbours all, that in the houses dwell,
A happie yeare, and every thing to spring and prosper well:
Here have they peares, and plumbs, and pence, ech man gives willinglee,
For these three nightes are alwayes thought, unfortunate to bee;
Wherein they are afrayde of sprites and cankred witches’ spight,
And dreadfull devils blacke and grim, that then have chiefest might.”[{28}]
With it may be compared the Macedonian custom for village boys to go in parties at nightfall on Christmas Eve, knocking at the cottage doors with sticks, shouting Kolianda! Kolianda! and receiving presents,[{29}] and also one in vogue in Holland between Christmas and the Epiphany. There “the children go out in couples, each boy carrying an earthenware pot, over which a bladder is stretched, with a piece of stick tied in the middle. When this stick is twirled about, a not very melodious grumbling sound proceeds from the contrivance, which is known by the name of ‘Rommelpot.’ By going about in this manner the children are able to collect some few pence.”[{30}]
Can such practices have originated in attempts to drive out evil spirits from the houses by noise? Similar methods are used for that purpose by various European and other peoples.[{31}] Anyhow something mysterious hangs about the Klöpfelnächte. They are occasions for girls to learn about their future husbands, and upon them in Swabia goes about Pelzmärte, whom we already know.[{32}]
[218]In Tyrol curious mummeries are then performed. At Pillersee in the Lower Innthal two youths combine to form a mimic ass, upon which a third rides, and they are followed by a motley train. The ass falls sick and has to be cured by a “vet,” and all kinds of satirical jokes are made about things that have happened in the parish during the year. Elsewhere two men dress up in straw as husband and wife, and go out with a masked company. The pair wrangle with one another and carry on a play of wits with the peasants whose house they are visiting. Sometimes the satire is so cutting that permanent enmities ensue, and for this reason the practice is gradually being dropped.[{33}]
St. Nicholas's Day.
On December 6 we reach the most distinctive children's festival of the whole year, St. Nicholas's Day. In England it has gone out of mind, and in the flat north of Germany Protestantism has largely rooted it out, as savouring too much of saint-worship, and transferred its festivities to the more Evangelical season of Christmas.[{34}] In western and southern Germany, however, and in Austria, Switzerland, and the Low Countries, it is still a day of joy for children, though in some regions even there its radiance tends to pale before the greater glory of the Christmas-tree.
It is not easy either to get at the historic facts about St. Nicholas, the fourth-century bishop of Myra in Asia Minor, or to ascertain why he became the patron saint of boys. The legends of his infant piety and his later wondrous works for the benefit of young people may either have given rise, or be themselves due to, his connection with children.[{35}] In eastern Europe and southern Italy he is above all things the saint of seafaring men, and among the Greeks his cult has perhaps replaced that of Artemis as a sea divinity.[{36}] This aspect of him does not, however, appear in the German festival customs with which we are here chiefly concerned.
It has already been hinted that in some respects St. Nicholas is a duplicate of St. Martin. His feast, indeed, is probably a later beginning-of-winter festival, dating from the period when [219]improved methods of agriculture and other causes made early December, rather than mid-November, the time for the great annual slaughter and its attendant rejoicings. Like St. Martin he brings sweet things for the good children and rods for the bad.