We can trace a deliberate substitution of the Christ Child for St. Nicholas as the bringer of gifts. In the early seventeenth century a Protestant pastor is found complaining that parents put presents in their children's beds and tell them that St. Nicholas has brought them. "This," he says, "is a bad custom, because it points children to the saint, while yet we know that not St. Nicholas but the holy Christ Child gives us all good things for body and soul, and He alone it is whom we ought to call upon."{1} The ways in which the figure, or at all events the name, of Christ Himself, is introduced into German Christmas customs, are often surprising. The Christ Child, "Christkind," so familiar to German children, has now become a sort of mythical figure, a product of sentiment and imagination working so freely as almost to forget the sacred character of the original. Christkind bears little resemblance to the Infant of Bethlehem; he is quite a tall child, and is often represented by a girl dressed in white, with long fair hair. He hovers, indeed, between the character of the Divine Infant and that of an angel, and is regarded more as a kind of good fairy than as anything else. In Alsace the girl who represents Christkind has her face "made up" with flour, wears a crown of gold paper with lighted candles in it--a parallel to the headgear of the Swedish Lussi; in one hand she holds a silver bell, in the other, a basket of sweetmeats. She is followed by the terrible Hans Trapp, dressed in a bearskin, with blackened face, long beard, and threatening rod. He "goes for" the naughty children, who are only saved by the intercession of Christkind.{2} In the Mittelmark the name of _de hele_ (holy) _Christ_ is strangely |231| given to a skin- or straw-clad man, elsewhere called Knecht Ruprecht, Klas, or Joseph.{3} In the Ruppin district a man dresses up in white with ribbons, carries a large pouch, and is called _Christmann_ or _Christpuppe_. He is accompanied by a _Schimmelreiter_ and by other fellows who are attired as women, have blackened faces, and are named _Feien_ (we may see in them a likeness to the Kalends maskers condemned by the early Church). The procession goes round from house to house. The _Schimmelreiter_ as he enters has to jump over a chair; this done, the _Christpuppe_ is admitted. The girls present begin to sing, and the _Schimmelreiter_ dances with one of them. Meanwhile the _Christpuppe_ makes the children repeat some verse of Scripture or a hymn; if they know it well, he rewards them with gingerbreads from his wallet; if not, he beats them with a bundle filled with ashes. Then both he and the _Schimmelreiter_ dance and pass on. Only when they are gone are the _Feien_ allowed to enter; they jump wildly about and frighten the children.{4}