uIn the future, Carniolan children will receive answers in their language to letters to St. Nicholas in the St. Nicholas post office in Saarland. St. Nicholas has recently also been answering in Ukrainian, as Sabine Gerecke, head of the children’s letter campaign in the St. Nicholas Festival Committee, said on Friday.
Of the around 3,000 letters to St. Nicholas that have arrived so far, around 30 are in Ukrainian. The senders are mainly Ukrainian children who are currently in Germany.
Gerecke assumed that even more Ukrainian children would turn to St. Nicholas in the coming weeks. In the years before, letters from children from the Ukraine had been answered with Russian letters, said Gerecke. “Not anymore!”
Otherwise, children’s letters are also answered in Spanish, French, Italian, English, Russian and Chinese in St. Nikolaus in Saarland. The reply letters will be sent from December 2nd.
By Christmas 2021, the volunteers had responded to 30,711 letters from children from a total of 43 countries: more than ever before. For more than 50 years, children have been writing “To St. Nicholas” in the small town in the municipality of Großrosseln near the French border. According to Deutsche Post, it is the oldest St. Nicholas post office in Germany. The partnership between the festival committee and Swiss Post has existed since 1967.
