December: gnomes and shoes
Postcard with an illustration by Anne Linnamägi (1966) for "The Santa Claus Who Was Afraid of Kids" by Leelo Tungal (Tammeraamat, 2010)
I have shown this postcard before, and the question I got was: "Why all the shoes?"
The sussipäkapikk* or a shoe-gnome is a tradition that reached Estonia in late 1980s from Scandinavia. Children will leave their inside shoes on the windowsill on December evenings and if the child has been good, in the morning there will be some candy in the shoe, left there by a visiting gnome!
On this postcard from year 1987 artist Regina Lukk has drawn the shoes most children wore in kindergarten and, as you can see, the children have been good, so there are sweets in their shoes (as each child leaves only a single shoes, this pair must mean a pair of kids, I assume)
* I have not made up my mind what would be the best translation for suss. Sussid are inside shoes - they could be called slippers, just that often sussid have closed heels. Does English have a special word for inside shoes?