Another little girl, a little older, writes from the same place of ‘how the “grand Saint Nicholas” has gone out of his way to come to see the Belgian children on December sixth, and how he delivered admonitions to various boys and girls but did not fail to distribute among them dainties much appreciated by all, big and little.’ The importance of St. Nicholas in Belgian life is evident. His festival day too, the celebration of which is so deeply rooted as not to lose its life in an atmosphere of exile and painful memory, has continued to hold an important place in the year’s life not only of Belgium but, as remains to be seen, of Holland. At one time the celebration of St. Nicholas’ day seems to have been general in most of western Europe. There is plentiful record of the earlier popularity of this celebration in all the southern and western parts of the countries occupied by the peoples speaking the Teutonic languages. It can be traced from Holland and Belgium, through eastern France, the Rhine provinces, Luxembourg, Alsace and Lorraine, through Switzerland, both French and German, as far east as the Tyrol and Salzburg, including on the way Baden, Württemberg, and Bavaria, in Germany.[2] In northern Germany, Protestantism, with its aversion to saint worship, was hostile to the St. Nicholas celebration. Also the growing concentration on Christmas day of the different winter popular celebrations, and especially the rapid rise in importance, during the last two centuries, of the Christmas tree, have caused the St. Nicholas customs, in many places, to be absorbed into the Christmas celebration, in other places, to go quite out of use. But popular customs seem to be to some extent affected by political boundaries, and in two of the smaller countries of western Europe, Belgium and Holland, the St. Nicholas customs still retain much of their earlier vigor. In Belgium, St. Nicholas has long been among the most venerated of saints, hardly second to St. Martin. In the whole country there are one hundred and six churches in his honor.[3] Besides he is the patron saint of many trades and crafts, for example, of the boatmen in cities on the Meuse, of sawyers, dyers, turners, and haberdashers at Bruges, of seedmen, packers, and coopers at Liège, of haberdashers and mercers at Malines. But above all he is the protector and the corrector of children.