St. Nicolas

As the holiday season is approaching, I wanted to tell you about some traditions over here.
So December 6th (tomorrow!) is a special day. The night of the 5th, children leave shoes/boots outside the doors of their houses in hopes that St. Nicolas will leave presents/goodies by them that night. Santa Claus is also supposed to show up Christmas Eve, so I guess they get double the presents over here.
This past weekend, I went to the town of Fribourg to watch the arrival and address of St. Nicolas to anyone who would listen (which was a LOT of people, apparently). This is an annual tradition that they have on the Saturday closest to the 6th, and it's a pretty big thing for Fribourg.
I hadn't visited Fribourg before, so I decided to make a day of it. I wandered the town, did a little Kenya shopping (I have to train my mind to search out brown, green and khaki coloured clothing - not a natural thing for me!), wandered the markets, saw the cathedral, walked the pedestrian walkway, saw the chateau, crossed the river. You know, the usual!
Is got pretty chilly waiting for the guy to arrive, but it was worth it. The streets were packed with people of all ages, and obviously lots of families with young children.
He arrived with a fanfare. Following a marching band, children holding candles, other holding a rope so that the crowd would not stampede St. Nicolas, some people with their faces painted and dressed up in black and finally, St. Nicolas riding on a donkey. He threw candy to the children and climber the stairs to the balcony of the cathedral.
From there his microphoned voice boomed across the square (sorry, the microphones covered up his face - could get the right angle to take a snap of his face) and he told us (in French and German) about how we should be individuals, not conform and feel pressured to wear t-shirts that say "Brice" on them (ha ha ha...he made reference to Brice de Nice!!!) or to step into the age of not "William Tell", but na-tel (French for cell phone) among other things.
I definitely didn't understand the whole speech (and not just the German parts). I'd like to blame St. Nicolas himself, because he was speaking so slowly and yelling the words, that I had trouble piecing the words together into phrases. So my French isn't where I'd like it to be yet. Darn.
He ended his speech and created this scary moment (which confused me...I thought he was supposed to be non-scary and stuff). He waved at the crowd, descended the stairs and the crowd dispersed and a moment of ooh-ing and ahh-ing and flash photography ensued after a projection of a stain glass window styled image of St. Nicolas appeared on the cathedral facade. It was beautiful.


So St. Nicolas is here to spread the love and there's lots of lights and sparkly things all around, making me a pretty happy girl.