How Swiss festive bad boy Schmutzli cleaned up his act

Once upon a time, a mysterious dark-faced figure would enter Swiss homes at the beginning of December, beating and (briefly) abducting children into behaving better. Then lo, the times did change, and Schmutzli, St Nicholas’s Swiss helper, got an image makeover. What happened? Edy Jauch still remembers seeing Schmutzli taking children into the forest in a sack. “Today, that would border on kidnapping,” he admits. But Jauch, a member of a guild in central Switzerland that promotes traditional customs, told the Luzerner Zeitung that the guild hadn’t got rid of Schmutzli. “Schmutzli isn’t an evil, beefy bodyguard. He’s more of an assistant who stands in the background and steps forward at Samichlaus’s request. He can inspire respect, but Schmutzli shouldn’t instil fear.” It’s true that occasionally families prefer him to stay outside – “but that’s very rarely the case”. A festive who’s who Saint Nicholas – Saint Nicholas of Myra was an early Christian bishop born in what is now Turkey ...