Growing up with a Swiss father and an English mother, my children have always been fairly multi-cultural, but sometimes the overlapping traditions cause all sorts of confusion. Christmas is a case in point.

Here in German-speaking Switzerland Santa Claus – locally known as Samichlaus – arrives on December 6th. He is generally accompanied by a grubby helper in brown robes, called Schmutzli (which really does translate as  a dirty little person) and whenever possible with a donkey in tow. Schmutzli carries a big sack – full of nuts and mandarines with the odd chocolate mixed in – and a twig broom. According to my husband – and I rather hope this isn’t true (please help me all you Swissies out there) – the broom is to hit the naughty children with and the bag to carry them away in. Yikes!

Samichlaus always came to school to visit when my children were in primary school and there are Samiclaus clubs where it is possible to book home visits on December 6th – which most Swiss families seem to do. (I never did – for reasons which will become apparent! ). The children were expected to say a rhyme or sing a song that they had learned and then Samiclaus would look in his big book and tell them what they had done well and where they needed to improve in the year ahead. This was always followed by the emptying of the sack and a huge rush for all the goodies.

Now how exactly does this square up with Santa coming down the chimney on Christmas Eve? Where are the reindeer and what happens to the donkey? Why does Santa come to all the English children and yet the Christ Child (Christkind) goes to the Swiss – and worst of all, why do the Swiss get their presents a day earlier (24th) and the English only the next morning? It all caused a great deal of perplexity when the children were young, but as they usually felt that they came out better with the way we did things, I could generally worm my way out of most of the tricky questions.

Wherever possible, I have tried to combine the traditions. While she was still alive, we visited my Swiss MIL on Christmas Eve and then she came to us for the Full Traditional English Christmas on the 25th, although she did balk a bit at being made to watch the Queen’s speech in the afternoon!

I’ve never joined in totally with the Swiss Guetzli (Christmas cookie) mania – which sees some people spending the whole of December making 20 or 30 different types of cookies, but I do manage to do a little bit, if only to keep hubby happy! I stick to one or two of the simpler favourites, but go the whole hog making a Christmas cake and mince-pies. Now my daughters seem to be taking over the guetzli baking mantle, which is lovely.

Since my MIL passed away, we’ve become distinctly more English, but thankfully my husband says he prefers celebrating on the 25th and making a whole day of it – and turkey with all the trimmings seems to beat fondue hands down, even if not everybody is totally taken with Christmas pudding.

One thing I’ve also discovered is that mulled wine and mince pies with some rousing carol singing is a big hit with my Swiss friends!

Helen

This entry was posted on Friday, December 2nd, 2011 at 2:53 pm and is filed under Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.