On 6 December the Feast of St Nicholas, the most important of the
church festivals in the period leading up to Christmas, is celebrated in
Central Europe
One of the oldest traditional customs, it has always been a festivity
for children. In Austria, St Nicholas is accompanied by the diabolical
figure of Krampus: the saint is benevolent and brings gifts for the
children, while the role of the Krampus is to punish childish
misdemeanours. Thus gift-giving was not originally associated with
Christmas itself, which was a purely ecclesiastical feast; Christmas as a
family festivity at which children received gifts is an invention of
the Biedermeier era.
St Nicholas’s Day was celebrated in all social classes, including the
imperial family: at Court gifts were distributed in the evening of the 5
December, and on 6 December the imperial family attended mass at the
Convent of St Nicholas on Vienna’s Singerstrasse, later dissolved by
Joseph II.
There exists a well-known depiction of this custom executed by
Archduchess Marie Christine, a daughter of Maria Theresa, in 1762. Set
in a small family living room, it shows a number of the empress’s
children discovering gifts in their shoes under the fond gaze of their
parents. This scene has often been adduced as evidence indicating that
the Habsburgs led an almost bourgeois life within the inner circle of
the family. However, recent research has demonstrated that Marie
Christine based her depiction on Netherlandish models, copying them down
to the smallest detail. As the furnishings of the room and the way in
which the figures are depicted have absolutely nothing in common with
ceremonial life at Court, it is now assumed that this scene is a kind of
playful attempt to depict the ideal of middle-class family life that
was just starting to emerge in the age of Enlightenment. It can be
compared to the pastorals of the Rococo era, where the nobility fled the
rigid world of court ceremonial for the ostensible idyll of rustic
life.
The scene contains a number of details that are still associated with
the Feast of St Nicholas. The children’s shoes are filled with
sweetmeats and toys; while one of the girls is enjoying her new doll and
the little boy in the centre is laying into the sweets, the older boy
only has a birch in his shoe, an unwelcome gift from the Krampus …
Learn more and log on to
The Habsburger (where this informative article is copied from)
