he great day for presents, and they
are actually called _etrennes_, a name obviously derived from _strenae_.
In Paris boxes of sweets are then given by bachelors to friends who have
entertained them at their houses during the year--a survival perhaps of
the "honeyed things" given in Roman times.

In many countries, however, present-giving is attached to the
ecclesiastical festival of Christmas. This is doubtless largely due to
attraction from the Roman New Year's Day to the feast hallowed by the
Church, but readers of the foregoing pages will have seen that Christmas
has also drawn to itself many practices of a November festival, and it is
probable that German Christmas presents, at least, are connected as much
with the apples and nuts of St. Martin and St. Nicholas[107] as with the
Roman _strenae_. It has already been pointed out that the German St.
Nicholas as present-giver appears to be a duplicate of St. Martin, and
that St. Nicholas himself has often wandered from his own day to
Christmas, or has been replaced by the Christ Child. We have also noted
the rod associated with the two saints, and seen reason for thinking that
its original purpose was not disciplinary but health-giving.

|278| It is interesting to find that while, if we may trust tradition,
the Roman _strenae_ were originally twigs, Christmas gifts in
sixteenth-century Germany showed a connection with the twigs or rods of
St. Martin and St. Nicholas. The presents were tied together in a bundle,
and a twig was added to them.{65} This was regarded by the pedagogic
mind of the period not as a lucky twig but as a rod in the sinister
sense. In some Protestant sermons of the latter half of the century there
are curious detailed references to Christmas presents. These are supposed
to be brought to children by the Saviour Himself, strangely called the
_Haus-Christ_. Among the gifts mentioned as contained in the
"Christ-bundles" are pleasant things like money, sugar-plums, cakes,
apples, nuts, dolls; useful things like clothes; and also things "that
belong to teaching, obedience, chastisement, and discipline, as A.B.C.
tablets, Bibles and handsome books, writing materials, paper, &c., _and
the_ '_Christ-rod_.'"{66}

A common gift to German children at Christmas or the New Year was an
apple with a coin in it; the coin may conceivably be a Roman
survival,{67} while the apple may be connected with those brought by St.
Nicholas.

The Christ Child is still suppos