Google Doodles Celebrate St. Nicholas and Sinterklaas Day

Google is kicking off the holiday season with a couple of St. Nicholas Day and Sinterklaas doodles in the countries that celebrate the tradition. Children in many countries receive presents on the morning of St. Nicholas Day and the figure serves as the basis for the modern Santa Claus.

Yesterday, Google ran a St. Nicholas Eve doodle in several Central and Easter European countries, along with the Netherlands, where the tradition of preparing your shoes for St. Nicholas' arrival is still kept.

The doodle showed all manner of shoes and boots sitting by the window waiting for the presents. The doodle, like most of Google's celebration logos, can be made to spell out "Google," though it's not exactly the most obvious doodle to date.

Today, when St. Nicholas is celebrated, a second doodle, this time with all the shoes filled with presents and sweets, adorns the Google homepage in a number of countries.

What's interesting is that Google chose to feature the second doodle in several new countries where the first one was not displayed yesterday. Most likely, this has to do with the fact that not all countries celebrate the eve of the holiday as well.

The new countries are Austria, Switzerland, and Germany, which complement Croatia, Hungary, Netherlands, Slovakia where the first doodle was displayed.

However, even stranger is the fact that there is no second custom logo in a couple of the countries where the St. Nicholas Eve logo was featured, namely the Czech Republic and Romania.

St. Nicholas is one of the most celebrated figures of both Catholic and Orthodox Christians. According to tradition, he brings gifts to the good children and leaves them in their shoes.

He is the model for Sinterklaas which is celebrated in the Netherlands and Belgium today. At the same time, Sinterklaas serves as the basis for Santa Claus as popularized by American culture.