Nobody Does Christmas Like Germany

It’s like I told Scribbit last week, I am not so obsessed with the Generous December Group Writing Project that I can’t enter other people’s. This entry, is for MamaBlogga’s December challenge to write about the best time of the year.

While living in Germany is often the cause elevating my stress levels, it does have it’s advantages. Nobody does Christmas like the Germans. Here, everyone works hard to make it the best time of the year. Below is an essay I wrote about traditional German Christmas markets to give you a taste of the local flavor…

Visiting the Christmas Market

• During Advent, the four weeks before Christmas, the old centres of German cities, towns and villages are transformed. The streets are taken over by die Weinachts Markts, the traditional German Christmas markets that are like mazes of warmth and delight.
• The time to visit Christmas markets is at night. Don’t worry. It gets dark at 4:30 or 5:00. You won’t be up late.
• As you approach the market, you see thousands of electric fairy lights twinkling in the distance. A few metres closer and you will see the glow of candlelight and red coal embers burning from the wooden booths. It looks warm enough to stop you from complaining of icy toes and red, frost bitten noses.
• As your eyes adjust to the light, all the scents of the season will strike you. The smell of fresh gingerbread mingles with the aroma of roasting almonds and water chestnuts. People walk around eating from paper cones filled with Mandelbrot, soft molasses cookies. Others have cookies cut into Christmas shaped hanging from ribbons around their necks. There are also about six kinds of German sausages sizzling over charcoal on huge iron grills.
• There is another sweet odour in the air. Something fruity and spicy. The smell comes from a drink called glüwein. It’s a red wine mixed with spices like cinnamon, nutmeg, lemon zest and a little pepper that is cooked like a soup. Adults drink it from dark blue mugs when it’s piping hot to take the edge off their shivers. There is no official drinking age in Germany, so many parents offer their children sips of the brew to taste, but no one gets drunk. Heating the wine makes most of the alcohol evaporate. There is also hot chocolate with cream, hot orange juice and heated fruit punch for those who don’t like the strong taste of Glüwein.
• In German homes, the Christkind, or the Christ Child in English, decorates the Christmas tree when he comes to visit on Christmas Eve. The wooden tree ornaments you see in the vendors’ booths are an important part of this tradition. The most popular tree ornaments are simple Stars of Bethlehem fashioned of straw and sewn with thread. There are enough tiny wooden angels singing, playing trumpets, strumming guitars, or beating on drums to fill an entire orchestra on every tree.
• Other ornaments double as toys. There are miniature rocking horses to be ridden by dolls, there are princes and princesses who jump or dance when you pull the string, and soldier-shaped nutcrackers like those in the famous ballet by Tchaikovsky. Even the crèche of the Nativity was considered a toy. New figures would be added to the scene each year. In the past, these handmade ornaments hanging on the tree with cookies and candy cut in Christmas shapes were the gifts children received and these special items could only be purchased at the Christmas market.
• Most of the other items available at the Christmas Market hark back to the days before Gameboy, Playstation and Xbox, but that doesn’t mean there is never any technology used in these old fashioned toys. One very traditional item operates on the heat energy produced by candlelight. Christmas pyramids are elaborate wooden centrepieces built in tiers. Each tier features another scene from the Nativity (the birth of Jesus in the stable) to the Epiphany (the visit of the three kings). Surrounding each tier, are holders for tiny candles. When the candles are lit, the heat they produce turns a fan that sets the different scenes spinning before your eyes.
• Other stalls in the market offer more practical gifts. Farmers sell leather-crafted mittens and hausshoes, slippers, lined with lambskin. Beekeepers sell candles for the Christmas trees and pyramids that are made from the wax that their hives have produced through the warmer months.
• The only problem is getting the chance to see everything. The streets are crammed with people, but its a happy crowd. Toddlers demand to sit on their fathers’ shoulders where they can actually see more than a sea of shoes and legs. Plenty of tired people offer to sit in the empty stroller. Bigger children climb up on top of fences and empty fountains to try to get a better look at all there is to see.
• At the centre of the market, near the old city hall, you will find a giant town Christmas tree. In Frankfurt and other large towns you will also find a stage where every evening you can hear local church choirs perform hymns, local bands playing carols to sing along with and dance school students performing for visitors to the market.
• Finally, you come upon a white and gold two-story carousel decorated with scenes from fairy tales. All the children selected horses with care while grandparents sit in sleighs and young families wave to each other as the organ and flashing lights accompany all the riders on their trips around and up and down.
• The Christmas market pleasures are all simple and old-fashioned, but in the cold dark nights of winter, it’s a visit that lights up all the senses.

P.S. If you read this before noon on Tuesday, December 11, would yo, pretty please, vote for my project blog entry this week.