Saint Nicholas Day
Historical Context
Saint Nicholas Day (Mikuláš) falls every year on 6 December. It is a children's day across Slovakia: Mikuláš leaves treats in clean boots for well-behaved children the night before.
Saint Nicholas of Myra has been venerated in Central Europe since the early Middle Ages. The Slovak tradition of children placing boots in the window for Mikuláš to fill is attested for centuries. Despite its religious origin, the practice survived the communist era as a children's tradition with the religious framing softened.
On the evening of 5 December, children clean their boots and place them on the windowsill. Mikuláš, often accompanied by an angel (anjel) for good children and a devil (čert) for misbehaving ones, comes during the night and leaves chocolate, fruit, and small gifts in the boots. In some towns, costumed Mikuláš figures visit children at home or in town squares. Traditional Mikuláš sweets include chocolate figures of the saint and bags of nuts and tangerines.
Regional Traditions
Šariš
Documented in ethnographic sources as one of the strongholds of the Mikuláš house-visit tradition, where Saint Nicholas typically traveled with a single accompanying čertík (little devil) rather than the now-common Mikuláš-anjel-čert trio. In some Šariš villages multiple Mikuláš figures (2-6) appeared without any devil at all, and women and children were also dressed as Mikuláš, an unusual gendered practice for the holiday.
Spiš
Spiš shared the Mikuláš house-visit tradition with Šariš using identical magical formulas, with the Mikuláš-and-čertík pair as the dominant variant. Ethnographers note Spiš as one of the regions where the custom was practised most vigorously, and where local masking and verse traditions preserved the older two-figure form rather than the modern angel-devil duo.