I think we can trust wikipedia on this one.
We here also know this in a very similar way, except for those black guys, I know only Knecht Ruprecht, who can also be found here.

Then again, we treat this a bit like a very minor version of Christmas or a small festval for kids in anticipation of christmas(where the really big presents will come).


Well, the americans adopted Santa Claus from Saint Niclas and use him for Christmas, so we re-adopted this guy as "Weihnachtsmann" who replaced the "Christkind" to a large part and sometimes appears like a different figure from "Nikolaus". The dark side of foreign influences and globalization I say