What is the difference between Mikulás and Télapó?

Hungarian children meet their Santa not on Christmas but on the night of December 5, when Mikulás fills the boots they leave on the windowsill. The name comes from Miklós, the Hungarian for Saint Nicholas. You will also hear Télapó, literally “Father Winter” — a secular substitute pushed during the communist era to strip the figure of its religious roots. Today the two names are used almost interchangeably.

Mikulás visits on his own feast day (December 6), separate from karácsony, Christmas itself. Good children get sweets and a tangerine; naughty ones get a virgács, a gilded birch switch, often delivered by his menacing companion Krampusz. Other market words in the clip: ajándék (gift), jászol (nativity manger), and forralt bor — “boiled wine,” the spiced mulled wine you are told never to actually boil.