Christmas is in the air...

School today was very fun. It is St. Mikulás' Day tomorrow and so it was celebrated today. It is the day that St. Nicolas visits and brings little presents for the children, as well as dark spirits (Krampus), who are there to visit bad children. As I was walking into school this morning I was stopped by nearly 15 girls dressed in black and wearing devil horns. I was told I had to sing a song before I could pass, and so I was told to sing Jingle Bells, at the end of which I was given Christmas candy, salon cukor. The school was blaring Christmas music and the halls were filled with kids just running around. During the first lesson, Santa came into our class, along with his devil companions and started to read off about the children, who was good and who needed to improve. It was amusing to see the children reacting to what was being said and for the most part they looked like deer in headlights. This continued for the the rest of the morning with Santa and the black devils roaming the halls and a huge following of kids trying to figure out where Santa was going. After school was done for the day we had a ceremony. It started with Mass in the church and was followed by my little kids doing a presentation about Christmas, some dressed as snow and others just as children. There was even a snowman and Santa made another appearance. At the end all the children were given bags of candy from Santa. I am not sure who provided the goods, but the priests seemed to be organizing it so I would think it was them. Very generous of them.


Here is Nandy dressed as snow...
You can see Christopher on the left with the bag of candy they got.