Impaginato 5.p65 - Universitat Rovira i Virgili

96
Roslyn M. Frank
It wasn’t until after the Council of Trent (1545-1563) that the figure of Christkind
or, in its diminutive form, das Christkindel, the Christ child, was introduced. 7 He,
too, was supposed to distribute gifts, but on Christmas Day. 8 That practice eventually
led St. Nicholas to change the date of his «good luck visits» to December 25 th , while,
somewhat ironically, the expression das Christkindel, originally intended to designate
little Jesus, evolved into Kris Kringle, one of the Germanic terms for Father
Christmas (Rodríguez 1997: 99-103). In the Netherlands, the bishop in question is
accompanied, nonetheless, by Black Peter (Zwarte Piet), his faithful servant, whose
role included carrying off misbehaving children in his giant sack or a large straw
basket, while today Zwarte Piet has been converted into an innocuous helper of a
kindly child-loving Sinterklaas (Figure 3). 9
Figure 3. Dag, Sinterklaasje (Hello, Sinterklaas). Source: Vriens (1983). Illustration by Dagmar Stam.
7 For a detailed and eminently erudite discussion of the various and sundry efforts, often frustrated, on
the part of the Church to establish the date for celebrations associated with the birth of Christ, cf.
Tille (1899: 119-137). Based on Tille’s discussions, it should be noted that in Britain even into the
sixth century there was significant confusion concerning whether the third of the three great Christian
festivals, the first two being Easter and Pentecost, was Epiphany or Christmas. Indeed, for many
centuries competing dates for Christ’s birth were November 17 and March 28 (Tille 1899: 119).
8 Nonetheless, in the United States, as in many other European countries, even into the early
nineteenth century, if presents were exchanged at this season it was usually done on New Year’s
Eve and they were exchanged between adults rather being given to children. «In the 1840’s
there was an increasing emphasis on Christmas Day. This seems to have happened for several