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In reply to the discussion: Xmas trivia - let's have some fun! [View all]aint_no_life_nowhere
(21,925 posts)on a U.S. Air Force base when my dad was transferred to Germany. The American teacher decided to expose us to German Christmas traditions. She invited a skinny-looking German Saint Nick into the classroom and following behind him was a guy they called Schwartz Peter (Black Peter) whose face looked like it was covered in black coal dust. Santa Klaus asked if the kids had behaved themselves. The teacher decided to play a gag on the class with a boy named Detlaf whose mother was German. She told Black Peter that Detlaf had been a bad boy. Black Peter carried a dirty coal sack over his shoulder and put Detlaf in it and carried him away while the other kids screamed. Then the teacher showed us a book in German with a bunch of scary illustrations of kids being punished by having their thumbs cut off with scissors or their eyes falling out of their heads to show us what happened when children didn't behave. Merry Christmas to us!