Children in Germany Leave Boots Out on December 5 and Find Them Full: St Nicholas Day, the Holiday Americans Never Hear Of

On the evening of the fifth of December, something small and lovely happens in homes across Germany, Austria, and much of Central Europe. Children clean a boot until it shines, and set it carefully by the front door before they go to bed.

In the morning they rush to check it, and the boot is full. Chocolate, a mandarin orange or two, a handful of nuts, maybe a small toy, all tucked inside where an empty boot stood the night before. St Nicholas has come.

This is Nikolaustag, St Nicholas Day, celebrated on the sixth of December. It is one of the most charming holidays on the European calendar, and one most Americans have never heard of, because in America everything was folded into a single visit from Santa on the twenty-fifth.

Here is how the boot tradition works, where it is celebrated, what St Nicholas leaves inside, who he really is, the catch for children who have misbehaved, and why America quietly skipped the whole thing. It may be the easiest European tradition there is to bring home.

The Boot by the Door

The heart of the tradition is the boot. On the night of the fifth, children set out a boot or shoe, often cleaned or polished first, by the door, on the windowsill, or near the fireplace, ready for St Nicholas to find.

Overnight, the story goes, St Nicholas makes his rounds from house to house. He slips the treats into the boots of children who have been good, and in the morning the household wakes to find the boots transformed from empty leather into small hoards of sweets and surprises.

For a child, it is a little burst of Christmas magic weeks before Christmas itself, a reward that arrives quietly in the dark and is waiting the moment they open their eyes.

The excitement of racing to the door to see what the boot holds is, for many European children, one of the warmest memories of the whole season. It also gives the long month of December a second landmark, so the wait for the twenty-fifth is broken up by this smaller, closer treat on the sixth.

At school and in towns, the day often brings a little extra magic too. In some places a man dressed as St Nicholas, in the red robes and tall hat of a bishop, visits schools, kindergartens, and markets, handing out treats and gently asking children whether they have been good. For a small child, meeting St Nicholas in person, a few weeks before Santa is even mentioned, is a genuine thrill.

Not Just a German Thing

Although Germany is where many Americans first encounter it, the boot-and-treats tradition stretches right across Europe. Austria, Switzerland, and much of Central Europe keep the same custom on the same two days, with local twists on the figure and the goodies.

The Netherlands has perhaps the biggest version of all, where St Nicholas is Sinterklaas, and the celebration is a genuine national event. In the weeks beforehand, Sinterklaas is said to arrive by steamboat from Spain, and Dutch children leave out a shoe, sometimes with a carrot or some hay for his horse, in exchange for sweets and small gifts. For many Dutch families, Sinterklaas on the fifth of December, not Christmas Day, is the main gift-giving occasion of the season.

So this is not some tiny local quirk. It is a major strand of how a large part of Europe does Christmas, observed by tens of millions of people, and almost entirely absent from the American calendar. The shape varies from country to country, but the core is the same everywhere: a shoe or a boot, set out at the start of December, and filled overnight by a kindly old saint.

What St Nicholas Leaves

What goes into the boot is pleasingly simple and old-fashioned. The classic haul is chocolate, often a chocolate St Nicholas figure wrapped in foil, along with mandarin oranges, nuts, perhaps some cookies or a small toy, and sometimes a few coins.

The oranges are not random. They are said to represent the gold that St Nicholas, in the old legends, gave secretly to the poor, so a bright orange in the toe of a boot is a small echo of a story a thousand years old.

That story is worth knowing, because it is the root of the whole saint. Nicholas is said to have quietly delivered gold to a poor man’s daughters so they would not be forced into a life on the streets, dropping it down the chimney or through a window, where in some tellings it landed in stockings or shoes left by the fire to dry. The shoes by the door and the gifts that appear in them overnight reach straight back to that legend of secret, generous giving.

There is a gentle restraint to the whole thing that feels increasingly rare. This is not a mountain of plastic and packaging but a boot with some chocolate, fruit, and nuts, a modest and wholesome kind of treat that has stayed more or less the same for generations.

The smallness is part of the charm. In an age of ever-bigger holidays, a tradition whose entire reward fits inside a single boot has a quiet dignity to it, and children seem to love it no less for its modesty.

The Real Man Behind Santa

Here is the detail that surprises many Americans. The St Nicholas who fills the boots is not a knockoff of Santa Claus. He is the original.

St Nicholas was a real historical figure, a bishop who lived in the fourth century in Myra, in what is now Turkey. He became famous for his generosity and his habit of secret gift-giving, especially to children and the poor, and after his death he was made a saint, with his feast day falling on the sixth of December.

Over the centuries, that saint, by way of the Dutch figure of Sinterklaas carried to America by immigrants, slowly transformed into the Santa Claus the world now knows.

So when German children set out their boots on the fifth, they are being visited by the genuine ancestor of Santa, on his real feast day. He appears in something much closer to his original form too: a kindly bishop rewarding good children, rather than the jolly red-suited figure of the shopping mall he eventually became.

The Catch for Naughty Children

St Nicholas does not only reward. The tradition has a sterner side, a gentle threat folded into the sweetness, which is part of what makes it so enduring.

Children who have been good find their boots full of treats. Children who have misbehaved, the old custom says, find something very different: a rute, a small switch of birch twigs, left in the boot as a warning rather than a reward. The message to a child is unmistakable, and wonderfully effective in the days leading up to the fifth. Few things concentrate a young mind on good behavior quite like the prospect of a boot full of birch twigs instead of chocolate.

In practice, of course, almost every child finds treats. The threat is mostly theater, a bit of gentle moral theater that parents and children both understand as a game. But it is a game with real roots, a surviving trace of an older idea that the season of giving should also be a season of accounting for how you have behaved.

In the Alpine regions the threat gets considerably darker, because there St Nicholas travels with a frightening companion whose whole job is to deal with the naughty ones. Depending on the region that companion might be the soot-faced Knecht Ruprecht of northern Germany or, most famously, the horned Alpine demon Krampus. The carrot of the treats comes with a very real stick, and generations of European children have cleaned their rooms and minded their manners in the first days of December with both firmly in mind.

The Holiday America Skipped

So why does almost no American grow up with this? The answer lies in how the traditions traveled and merged. In America, the figure of St Nicholas and the various gift-giving customs all collapsed, over time, into one big event: Santa Claus arriving on Christmas Eve to fill stockings for the morning of the twenty-fifth.

The separate, earlier feast of St Nicholas on the sixth of December largely fell away, surviving mainly in families with strong German, Dutch, or Belgian roots who kept putting out shoes and boots. For most Americans, the whole lovely idea of a small gift-giving holiday weeks before Christmas simply never existed. The sixth of December passes like any other day, with no boots by the door and no saint on his rounds.

There are exceptions, in pockets of the country where the old European roots stayed strong. In some German, Dutch, and Belgian neighborhoods, children still set out their shoes on the fifth, keeping a thread of the tradition alive. But for the great majority of American families, it is simply unknown.

Which is a shame, because it is such an easy and delightful thing to adopt. There is no tree to buy, no feast to cook, no pile of presents, just a boot by the door and a little chocolate and fruit tucked inside overnight.

Plenty of American families who learn about it start doing it themselves. They find that a small, gentle holiday in early December, with its old-fashioned treats and its real historical saint, adds something quietly wonderful to the season. If you want a taste of the way much of Europe begins its Christmas, you need only clean a boot, set it by the door on the fifth, and see what the morning brings.