Guest Author - Holly Fox

Advent: According to church calendars, this is period just before Christmas, starting four Sundays before the 25th of December. In Germany the religious tradition of lighting one candle each Sunday until at Christmas is taken into the home. By the fourth Sunday of advent a wreath of four candles is fully lit, signifying the imminent birth of the Christ child. The advent season has been so fully secularized that even television commercials use the phrase “Second Advent” of “Third Advent” rather than the actual date to alert viewers of upcoming movie specials.

The Advent calendar, as we know it in the United States, with pieces of chocolate behind little tagboard doors, is also taken to a new level. Many children receive the chocolate advent calendar as well as homemade calendars with a gift for each of the twenty-four days in December before Christmas. Such gifts are often tucked into fabric pouches strung across a ribbon or garland.

Nikolaustag: On the evening before the 6th of December, children in Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands clean their shoes. The next morning children who have behaved well in the last year find them filled with nuts, mandarins, sweets, and small gifts. Bad children receive coal or even a whip with which they are to be punished. The holiday originates from two legends. The first is the story of the Saint Nicholas, the wealthy Bishop of Myra, who, according to legend, saved the three daughters of a poor family from a lifetime of prostitution by secretly leaving each of them a piece of gold as a dowry. This story combined with a pre-Christian Germanic myth in which children left their boots filled with straw and carrots for the god Odin’s flying horse during his yearly Yule-time hunt. Odin rewarded the children with gifts and sweets. Sankt Nikolaus or Sinterklaas in the Netherlands and Flemish Belgium is the origin of the American Santa Claus, although Germans now also welcome the Weihnachtsmann or “Christmas Man” on the night between the 24th and 25th of December. The cultural exportation has now come full circle.

Weihnachtsmaerkte: What makes Christmas in Germany Christmas are the incredible markets throughout the cities and villages throughout the country. Starting even before the advent season, streets and squares are taken over by stands selling wooden nativity scenes, toys, regional specialties, and all sorts of strange and delicious things to eat. Although the Christmas markets I have seen have all been a little bit disappointingly commercial and feature very little of the handmade crafts I was expecting, there really is something special about wandering the stalls and sipping a mug of hot Gluehwein.

For more about this hot, alcoholic “glowing wine” and other delicacies central to the German Christmas experience, see next weeks article.