Saint Nicholas Day

Saint Nicholas Day is the Dutch feast on which Saint Nicholas visits homes on December 5 and distributes gifts early on December 6. In the novel, it is more than a calendar custom: it gives winter an atmosphere of suspense and family celebration, while its traditions of generosity and moral judgment resonate with the characters’ struggles and choices.

Date and Customs

The narrator distinguishes the Dutch observance from the Christmas familiar to the book’s American readers. Saint Nicholas comes on December 5; early on the sixth, he leaves candies, toys, and other treasures, then disappears for another year. Christmas Day, by contrast, is reserved for church rites and family visiting. The children’s anticipation gathers on Saint Nicholas’s Eve, making the night before the feast its emotional center.

The saint’s visit is not presented as unqualified reward. He is said to judge children’s behavior over the preceding year: a birch rod or a parental scolding may take the place of sweets and toys. The tradition joins delight to correction, so that the prospect of gifts carries a lesson about conduct, thrift, charity, and kindness to animals.

The Van Gleck Household

At the Van Gleck mansion, the visit becomes a carefully staged family ritual. Saint Nicholas addresses the children by name and recalls their particular failings: Diedrich had been rude at a fair, Mayken had neglected her lessons and charity box, and Katy had tormented a cat. He couples reprimand with a chance to amend, urging the children to be polite, studious, economical, and gentle toward creatures too small to defend themselves. When Katy cries, he pauses until she is soothed before continuing.

After his address, sugarplums are scattered on a linen sheet and the children scramble to fill their baskets. They place their shoes on a table covered with white damask; the room is locked, and the key hidden in their mother’s bedroom. The family then exchanges goodnight kisses and goes upstairs, leaving the closed room to hold the night’s promise. In the morning, the household gathers to open it: every shoe is full, and the table is laden with candies, toys, trinkets, books, and other presents, from the grandfather down to the baby. Katy claps with delight and resolves not to hurt the cat again; Hilda opens a crimson box to find glittering gifts.

Hope in the Brinker Cottage

For the Brinker family, Saint Nicholas’s Eve sharpens the pain of their poverty and of the money stolen from them. Dame Brinker wishes the lost savings might return on the bright feast night. Though she identifies herself as a Protestant, she says she has prayed to Saint Nicholas, asking him either to keep the thieves from sleeping until they return the money or to help the family discover it. She has seen no trace of it since the day before Raff Brinker was hurt, and her repeated searches of the cottage have failed. Her appeal places inherited popular devotion alongside formal religious identity, in the intimate setting of a mother’s anxiety for her family.

The feast’s economy of gifts also finds an echo in acts of generosity elsewhere in the winter story. Hilda van Gleck has only eight kwartjes left after spending much of her monthly allowance on lace and finery, yet gives the money to Hans Brinker and Gretel Brinker so they can choose skates for the coming race. She cannot buy a pair for each child, and asks them to decide which has the better chance of winning. The gift is limited, but it turns what she has into an opportunity for the poorer children.

Giving Beyond the Feast

The story’s later acts of giving extend the moral pattern associated with the holiday without making them part of its calendar observance. When Hans Brinker finds Peter van Holp’s lost purse, he returns it and refuses Peter’s offer to divide the money. The refusal matters: the help restores Peter’s property without turning the act into a bargain or a claim on reward.

Later, when Peter damages his skate strap just before the race, Hans removes his own strap and insists that Peter use it. Hans tells him to join the racers, saying he will not skate and that Peter has the better chance against Carl Schummel. Peter calls Hans noble and takes his place as the starting handkerchief falls. Set beside Saint Nicholas Day’s gifts and admonitions, these episodes make generosity a practice measured not by abundance but by what a person is willing to give up for someone else.