Today, December 6, is the Feast of St. Nicholas. When we were kids we'd put our shoes somewhere where St. Nicholas could fill them with candy or other sweets. Depending on how the religious calendars coincided, St. Nicholas would sometimes bring marked down, post-Hanukkah gelt. (If Hanukkah came late in a given year, the Hanukkah gelt would wind up in our Christmas stockings instead.)
Very ecumenical and economical.
Naturally I tried (at least once) to leave my boots out for St. Nicholas, as opposed to mere shoes. My parents vetoed the plan.
The thought -- now -- of eating something that had been left to linger in my shoes overnight strikes me as awful. What were we thinking?
But, of course, what we were thinking -- then -- was that this was an opportunity to get candy and we really didn't care if it had to marinate in our stinky gym shoes for some hours before we could get at it. Chocolate is chocolate.
Nor were we overly concerned with whether St. Nicholas was or was not the same guy as Santa Claus. I suppose if we thought about it, we might have wondered why the same old guy would come by on both the 6th and the 24th. With a different modus operandi on each occasion. But no self-respecting kid wonders long about where candy is coming from, as long as it's coming in sufficiently copious quantities.
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