Saint Nic.

You know Saint Nic. Or you think you do. Lots of red and white, cheery round fellow, reindeer, elves… Right? Well, yes, but not in Belgium (and, probably a few other countries, but I’m in Belgium so I’m going with that). In Belgium, Saint Nicholas is a bishop who carries a staff and rides around on a donkey, together with his side-kick “Zwarte Piet” (or “Père Fouettard”). But we’ll gloss over that part of the tradition because I really object to the idea of telling kids that if they’re good they get presents from St. Nic but that if they’re bad then they get coal – and possibly a good hiding (“fouetter”, after all, means “to whip”) – from someone with a blacked-up face. You can probably guess why. Anyway, he’s an impatient bugger that Saint Nic: he can’t wait until the 25th of December. Oh no. He’s here distributing his presents – and a whole lot of chocolate – on the 6th. And he is taken very very seriously.

My company organised a bit of a party in his honor. There was a show, a games room set up in our canteen, balloon blowing, face painting and, of course, a visit from the man himself. But I’m getting ahead of myself. First, Amélie had to come to my office to doodle on my white-board…

OK, yes, I cheated! These are both before- and after-party pictures. The face-paints gave that one away. Talking of which…

And damn damn damn! I forgot to blur the texture after applying it so now Amélie has a cross-hatched face in the bottom two pictures. Grrr! Anyway, here’s the main man himself, the one you’ve all been waiting for: Saint Nicholas (telling Amélie to clean her teeth properly because that’s the only thing a certain person could think of that she could maybe do better at):

And that should do for today! Happy Saint Nicholas!