Focus on Stamps 04/2005 - Die Schweizerische Post

Special Stamps Christmas Customs
Santa Claus (St. Nicholas) in Fribourg and “Grittibänz”
The Advent, Christmas and New Year
period has a wealth of customs.
Beside the ones widely known
throughout Europe, there are some
regional – and even purely local –
traditions. Swiss Post is therefore
launching its new four-year “Christmas
Customs” series with the special
stamps “Santa Claus in Fribourg”
and “Grittibänz”.
In the Christian churches, there are few
saints as important as the Holy Bishop
Nicholas of Myra. The starting point for
his veneration is Myra (present-day
Demre, Turkey). That was where, sometime
around 300 A.D., a pious and
charitable Bishop lived about whom
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many legends started to grow over the
next few centuries. Although his fame
had already reached Western and
Northern Europe by the year 1000, it was
not until 1087 that widespread veneration
of him began, when merchants
from Bari in Southern Italy stole his bones
and brought them to their hometown
where a basilica was then erected in his
honour. A Lorraine crusader’s deed was
hardly less illegal. He brought a bone
from St. Nicholas’s finger to the markettown
later known as St. Nicolas-de-Port
(near Nancy in France), and this town
developed into a major place of pilgrimage,
particularly after the Burgundy
Wars in the late 15th century, especially
as the Holy Bishop was chosen as the
patron saint of Lorraine.
An ecumenical Saint
St. Nicholas is also the patron saint of
Russia and Greece as well as of the City
and Canton of Fribourg – a clear indication
of the great importance attached
to him both in the Eastern and in the
Western Church. So he not only survived
the 1054 Schism of the Church but also
the Reformation, which made him an
ecumenical Saint.
The Feast of St. Nicholas is celebrated on
6 December, but profane tradition rather
than religious ceremony mark this day,
as customs involving masks and noise
which originally had nothing to do with
the Saint coexist with the advent of the
Bishop who distributes gifts. The latter
is explained by the legends which made
St. Nicholas the patron saint of children
and students in the Middle Ages.
And it is from those days that St. Nicholas’s
entrance into Fribourg in the flesh
dates: a schoolboy, dressed as a Bishop,
Two exhibitions about St. Nicholas
100 Saint Nicholas
3.12.05–29.1.06; Tues.–Sun. 11 a.m. – 6 p.m.,
Tues. until 8 p.m.
Art and History Museum / Musée d’art et d’histoire,
Rue de Morat 12, Fribourg, www.fr.ch/mahf
Santa Claus & Co. – Vom grossen Heiligen zur
Ikone des Weihnachtskommerzes
12.11.05–8.1.06; Tues.–Sun. 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.
Museum der Kulturen (Museum of Ethnology),
Augustinergasse 2, Basel, www.mkb.ch
rides into the city on the evening of
the Feast acting as if he were an ecclesiastical
dignitary. The “la Saint-Nicolas”
was banned in 1784, and the custom
was quickly forgotten until 1906 when
the Fribourg Collège St-Michel revived
the school children’s procession, which
will be performed for the hundredth time
this year.
A seasonal treat with many names
Nowadays, St. Nicholas’s gifts include,
among many other delectable items,
bread baked in the shape of a man with
legs apart, called “Grittibänz”, “Grättimaa”,
“Elggermaa”, “Chlaus” or “petit
bonhomme”, depending on the region.
As late as the 1930s, the figure made