Père Fouettard and Hans Trapp

The butcher who follows the saint

St. Nicolas is the patron saint of Lorraine, and the St. Nicholas Center tells the region's favourite legend: a wicked butcher lured three children into his shop, killed them and salted them away in a tub. St. Nicolas brought them back to life, and the butcher became Père Fouettard, “who has followed St Nicolas in shame ever since”. The French song about the three children goes back to the 16th century. Another Lorraine legend places his birth in Metz in 1552, during the siege by Emperor Charles V, when townspeople paraded a dummy of the emperor; the stories probably merged over time.

December 6 in eastern France

Children leave out their shoes and find chocolates, gingerbread and saint-shaped brioche; Père Fouettard, with his scraggly beard and the whip on his hip, is said to hand out coal, turnips and potatoes instead. The St. Nicholas Center notes that what children really fear is that he will talk the saint into skipping them. In Nancy's St. Nicolas parade he “strives to disgust, but not scare”, and the night ends with fireworks.

Hans Trapp, the knight of Alsace

Strasbourg's own Christmas site says Hans Trapp is based on a real man, the robber knight Hans von Trotha of Berwartstein Castle near Wissembourg, who “terrorized the inhabitants of northern Alsace until his death in 1503”. He once dammed a river to cut off a town's water, then broke the dam and flooded it. In Alsatian Christmas lore he threatens to carry naughty children off in his bag, while the Christkindel, a figure of light dressed in white, rewards the good. Five hundred years on, he is still being used to get children to bed, which is a legacy of sorts.