I blame the Guardian for spending the whole day humming Christmas songs from my childhood.
There is a neat article in the Guardian about German Christmas markets being exported to Britain. Just ignore the "Christmasses compaired" section at the end because it is rubbish.
Christmas traditions here depend on what region you are from, if you are/the region is (culturally) Catholic or Protestant, and the individual preferences of the person celebrating, of course.
I am from East Germany, a culturally Protestant region, ie. Berlin-Brandenburg, and no one in my family is religious. This is what we do (I am following the Guardian structure, contrasting what the author says with what my family actually does):
Main celebration time
Christmas eve (Heiligabend or Holy Eve, when shops close early and presents are opened) .
We celebrate on the 24th, this is true. There is no special time reserved for the giving of presents but it has to be after dark. We try to keep the illusion alive for the little ones in the family. They know there is no Santa but they like to have a guy in a red robe and white beard hand out presents. Usually it's a friend of the family or a neighbour or a hired university student. Last year I was Santa because the family friend got sick, the traitor.
Yes, this is me in a Santa suit. :/
The tree
Germans invented Christmas trees. They don't put theirs up until 24 December and they use real candles, wooden decorations and no tinsel.
We do put up the tree on the 24th and it will stay there until the first of January. Depending on the type of conifer used, we will spend the last couple days until New Year bitching about needles EVERYWHERE. After New Year comes the time to GET RID OF THE TREE WHICHEVER WAY POSSIBLE. You do not have to pay for getting rid of the tree, just get it on the street so the city cleaning can pick it up. I advise you to be wary around apartment buildings or risk getting crushed by flying conifer, tinsel and all.
I don't know anyone who still uses real candles because that is a serious fire hazard. My grandparents used to do that and my parents, too, but I never experienced it. We still own candle holders for the tree, though.
Wooden decorations are used, but not exclusively. The best wooden decorations come from the Erzgebirge region.
There are different types of conifers you can use, most common is the Nordmann Fir. My father is in charge of getting the tree and putting it up while my mother and I stand around complaining how crappy and uneven the branches are and "could you have found a more bent tree? Also, it's too tall, go chop off a bit." At which point my father gets huffy and disappears into his office. Good times.
You can either buy a tree, buy the permission to go fell your own tree in a designated area, or heft an axe over your shoulder and sneak into the forest illegally. All three measures have been employed by my family. :)
So, decorations. I am in charge of decoration (at my parent's place where I usually celebrate). So on the afternoon of the 24th my father puts up the tree and brings up boxes upon boxes of decorations from the cellar. His work for the day is done at that point. My mother has been in the kitchen for hours already, preparing food for the three of us, but most importantly for the actual family dinner taking place when the German sister + nieces come around on the 25th or 26th, or we go to Berlin to them. More about that in the food section.
To get in the mood I bannish everyone from the living room and put on some Christmas music. Most often it is Weihnachten in Familie on vinyl.
Or one of the other old vinyls from the GDR my parents own, like this one:
I would never listen to a CD of this. The crackling sound of an old vinyl and the fact that you cannot simply put it on repeat are part of the appeal. Then I light the candles for the Weihnachtspyramide (Christmas pyramide) and turn on the Räuchermännchen (smoking man) and I am ready to go.
My parents own some gorgeous Christmas baubles still made from glas. We also own a lot of homemade decoration from my childhood, like different types of paper stars. My mother also used to crochet Christmas decoration.
You can see some homemade deco on my sister's tree. (That big-ass tinsel piece on the tree makes me VERY UNHAPPY.) And more me in a Santa suit.
We always use tinsel, but only the type that comes in thin stripes. It is called Lametta and exists in a few colours. Since I am in charge of decoration no golden anything will touch the tree, only silver and red Lametta. There are people who decorate by using the grab-a-handful-of-Lametta-and-throw-it-at-the-tree style. I am not one of them (at least at first).
First come the lights. I am a purist so there will be no blinking or colourful lights anywhere. Lights are very important! You can camouflage crappy branches or holes among the branches. At certain intervals I will make a light test to judge my tree's awesome and rearrange the lights if they don't satisfy.
Next come the baubles. I use red, silver/white and green ones. They will be strategically placed to make the tree look more even (while muttering about my father's choice of tree this year, every year). And I never put identically coloured deco next to each other. Very important! Then I can use the large homemade stuff, strategically placed again. The small stuff comes last.
Have you noticed the vital mistake I make every year? Yes, I always leave the top for last because I love balancing on my toes on a wobbly chair or the back of the couch using a sharp knife to try to make the top into a shape I can use. Bonus points if I manage to get resin all over my hands, scratch up my arms and have needles poking me in the eye. Though I have never once fallen over into the tree. \o/ Wait, no, the one time I celebrated Christmas in the US with the oldest sister the oldest niece and I killed the tree. Nevermind! /o\
Anyway, my mother is also made of fail because she always forgets to buy a new decoration for the top of the tree. The inherited awesome glass angel has been broken for nigh on ten years now. I always have to improvise.
So, Lametta. I usually use silver or red Lametta, but never two colours together. Like I said before, Lametta will not be thrown at the tree. Strands are carefully separated and draped over branches creating the appearance of an iced-over tree. This careful way of decoration last roughly until half the tree is finished. Then all bets are off.
If you own a pet, decorate the lower branches at your own peril.
Voilá!
Bringer of presents
Das Christkind (the Christchild) - don't look or he won't come - or the Weihnachtsmann (Christmas man). German children also get treats on 6 December from the Niklaus, who leaves sweets and nuts in shoes.
There is no Christkind anywhere in my Christmas. December 6th is Nikolaus. Children are told to shine their shoes (because children are smart they choose their BIGGEST shoes) and leave them out in the evening. In the morning they will find them filled with toys and sweets. Or if they are anything like me, they will wait up in bed until they are certain their parents have filled the shoes and sneak out to bounce in glee over their shiny. And in the morning pretend to be surprised. And if the parents are smart they will know their kid and stuff a Rute (a small branch from a conifer) in the shoes until they are certain the kid is asleep and then fill the shoes for real. It is mostly for kids but parents gift each other, too.
We also have an Adventskalender. You can either buy one or make your own, some come with chocolate fillings or simply with pictures behind the doors. My favourite homemade calendar was made from matchboxes (see examples). Here are some pictures of homemade Adventskalender to give you an idea.
The four Sundays before Christmas are called Advent. On the first Advent my mother puts out the Christmas decorations. Advent is not something I care about much. There are years when I never decorate my own apartment at all.
The meal
Roast carp with potato salad.
Er, no. Carp is not Christmas food where I am from, it's traditional New Year food. I remember during the GDR years there was a shop that sold live carp before New Year. So for one day we usually had a carp swimming around in our bathtub.
On Christmas eve we usually eat light, so potato salad with sausages (and something vegetarian for me) is not uncommon. For the real family dinner we often eat goose with red cabbage and dumplings (usually of the Thüringer Klöße kind). Well, the family eats goose, I eat everything else, though mostly my mother's homemade red cabbage, because om nom nom.
Last year's family dinner at my sister's. The goose looks pitiful, I know. My sister massacred it. :(
There even exists a story about the Weihnachtsgans Auguste ("Christmas goose Auguste") by GDR author Friedrich Wolf.
Link:
(Link. I hope it works outside of Germany.)
Sweet treats
Stollen, a fluffy fruit cake covered in icing and eaten for breakfast.
Who in their right mind reserves Stollen for breakfast only? Om nom nom. Also, icing? No, just no. When they say icing they mean powdered sugar. The very best Stollen is the original one from Dresden.
Another treat used to be naval oranges and mandarines. I still associate the smell with Christmas. Non-local fruits were very, very rare in the GDR. East Germans and their cravings for bananas used to be a joke West Germans laughed heartily about.
The text reads: Zone-Gabi (17) in luck (FRD): My first banana.
Haha, very funny. Zone AKA Soviet occupation zone, a term you will still hear today (Hi, current co-workers!) and one of the things I have no sense of humour about. At all.
Anyway, let's get back to fruits. So on Christmas eve I would find one or two naval oranges and mandarines on my Weihnachtsteller (Christmas plate) together with chocolate and candy and nuts and other Christmas treats. Like this:
Let us ignore all other Christmas treats because it would take forever. Lebkuchen and Marzipan and Dominosteine and Schokoladenweihnachtsmänner and filled chocolate eggs and Nougat and Zimtsterne and Schmalzkuchen and candied fruit and Kokosmakronen and Plätzchen and Spekulatius and Pfeffernüsse and EVERYTHING. OMNOMNOM.
TV
Germans watch Sissi - Die junge Kaiserin, the story of the empress of Austria, Elisabeth of Bavaria.
Er, do they even show the Sissi movies during Christmas time? Christmas eve is when we watch Drei Haselnüsse für Aschenbrödel again and again and again because it is shown the whole day and you can watch on one channel and at the end hop to another and watch it again. \o/ Best version of the Cinderella fairy tale ever. I will never stop loving this film. I bought the DVD the one year I stayed in Ireland and didn't go home. It is not Christmas without this film.
And when there are no more Czechoslovakian fairy tales on TV, I switch to the Russian ones.
And when there are no more Russian ones, I switch to GDR films.
Who would voluntarily watch Sissi if there are Eastern European/Eastern Bloc fairy tale films on TV?
Other quirks
During December, children go "Niklauslaufen", a sort of trick or treating, asking for sweets in return for a poem.
Nope, wrong region. I had to look this up. Never heard of it before. We also don't do star singing (seriously, it's called "Star boys' singing" in English? Way to exclude girls.). It's a Catholic thing.
There is one special thing my family does, though. It's called Tierweihnacht (Animal Christmas). I have no idea if it's a Thing or just something my parents made up to get me out of the house so they could keep the illusion of a Santa Claus bringing presents alive. So when I was a child my father and I would pack a bag with vegetables and fruits (potatoes, apples, carrots, etc.), thread and a pocket knife and would go into the forest while my mother stayed at home. It used to be a strict father/daughter thing. We would choose a tree and start decorating it with the contents of our bag, always making sure to put some things up high and some things on the lower branches so the different animals could get to our treats.
I never saw other people do this so it may be a particular family tradition. When we got home there would be presents under the tree and my mother would pretend she had no idea where they'd come from. :D
We still do that with the little nieces when they come for the family dinner. Not the presents part, though.
When the family dinner happens at my sister's place, we sometimes go to church in the evening. My father always refuses to go. The rest of the family is basically yeah, whatever about religion while my father has some serious beef with it. It's not a religious thing, though. The oldest German niece is friends with a girl who's part of a Nativity play so we go for her. It's like going to any other amateur stage play, except that half the time you feel utterly out of place/intruding and the other bored out of your skull or fighting the urge to yell at the guy in a robe up front for the stupid stuff he says. Or maybe that's just me.
So this is what my family actually does around Christmas time. And now I have some serious cravings for Christmas treats and the urge to watch fairy tales on youtube for hours and hours, or maybe just to call my mother.
So how do you celebrate Christmas or Hanukkah or Eid or Diwali or Solstice or... any holiday that means something to you? Tell me all about it! :D
PS. Let me know if any of the embedded media doesn't work. I will try to find alternatives.
Originally posted at Dreamwidth. | Comments so far:
| You can use OpenID to comment on Dreamwidth. |
Christmas traditions here depend on what region you are from, if you are/the region is (culturally) Catholic or Protestant, and the individual preferences of the person celebrating, of course.
I am from East Germany, a culturally Protestant region, ie. Berlin-Brandenburg, and no one in my family is religious. This is what we do (I am following the Guardian structure, contrasting what the author says with what my family actually does):
Main celebration time
Christmas eve (Heiligabend or Holy Eve, when shops close early and presents are opened) .
We celebrate on the 24th, this is true. There is no special time reserved for the giving of presents but it has to be after dark. We try to keep the illusion alive for the little ones in the family. They know there is no Santa but they like to have a guy in a red robe and white beard hand out presents. Usually it's a friend of the family or a neighbour or a hired university student. Last year I was Santa because the family friend got sick, the traitor.
Yes, this is me in a Santa suit. :/
The tree
Germans invented Christmas trees. They don't put theirs up until 24 December and they use real candles, wooden decorations and no tinsel.
We do put up the tree on the 24th and it will stay there until the first of January. Depending on the type of conifer used, we will spend the last couple days until New Year bitching about needles EVERYWHERE. After New Year comes the time to GET RID OF THE TREE WHICHEVER WAY POSSIBLE. You do not have to pay for getting rid of the tree, just get it on the street so the city cleaning can pick it up. I advise you to be wary around apartment buildings or risk getting crushed by flying conifer, tinsel and all.
I don't know anyone who still uses real candles because that is a serious fire hazard. My grandparents used to do that and my parents, too, but I never experienced it. We still own candle holders for the tree, though.
Wooden decorations are used, but not exclusively. The best wooden decorations come from the Erzgebirge region.
There are different types of conifers you can use, most common is the Nordmann Fir. My father is in charge of getting the tree and putting it up while my mother and I stand around complaining how crappy and uneven the branches are and "could you have found a more bent tree? Also, it's too tall, go chop off a bit." At which point my father gets huffy and disappears into his office. Good times.
You can either buy a tree, buy the permission to go fell your own tree in a designated area, or heft an axe over your shoulder and sneak into the forest illegally. All three measures have been employed by my family. :)
So, decorations. I am in charge of decoration (at my parent's place where I usually celebrate). So on the afternoon of the 24th my father puts up the tree and brings up boxes upon boxes of decorations from the cellar. His work for the day is done at that point. My mother has been in the kitchen for hours already, preparing food for the three of us, but most importantly for the actual family dinner taking place when the German sister + nieces come around on the 25th or 26th, or we go to Berlin to them. More about that in the food section.
To get in the mood I bannish everyone from the living room and put on some Christmas music. Most often it is Weihnachten in Familie on vinyl.
Click to viewOr one of the other old vinyls from the GDR my parents own, like this one:
I would never listen to a CD of this. The crackling sound of an old vinyl and the fact that you cannot simply put it on repeat are part of the appeal. Then I light the candles for the Weihnachtspyramide (Christmas pyramide) and turn on the Räuchermännchen (smoking man) and I am ready to go.
My parents own some gorgeous Christmas baubles still made from glas. We also own a lot of homemade decoration from my childhood, like different types of paper stars. My mother also used to crochet Christmas decoration.
You can see some homemade deco on my sister's tree. (That big-ass tinsel piece on the tree makes me VERY UNHAPPY.) And more me in a Santa suit.
We always use tinsel, but only the type that comes in thin stripes. It is called Lametta and exists in a few colours. Since I am in charge of decoration no golden anything will touch the tree, only silver and red Lametta. There are people who decorate by using the grab-a-handful-of-Lametta-and-throw-it-at-the-tree style. I am not one of them (at least at first).
First come the lights. I am a purist so there will be no blinking or colourful lights anywhere. Lights are very important! You can camouflage crappy branches or holes among the branches. At certain intervals I will make a light test to judge my tree's awesome and rearrange the lights if they don't satisfy.
Next come the baubles. I use red, silver/white and green ones. They will be strategically placed to make the tree look more even (while muttering about my father's choice of tree this year, every year). And I never put identically coloured deco next to each other. Very important! Then I can use the large homemade stuff, strategically placed again. The small stuff comes last.
Have you noticed the vital mistake I make every year? Yes, I always leave the top for last because I love balancing on my toes on a wobbly chair or the back of the couch using a sharp knife to try to make the top into a shape I can use. Bonus points if I manage to get resin all over my hands, scratch up my arms and have needles poking me in the eye. Though I have never once fallen over into the tree. \o/ Wait, no, the one time I celebrated Christmas in the US with the oldest sister the oldest niece and I killed the tree. Nevermind! /o\
Anyway, my mother is also made of fail because she always forgets to buy a new decoration for the top of the tree. The inherited awesome glass angel has been broken for nigh on ten years now. I always have to improvise.
So, Lametta. I usually use silver or red Lametta, but never two colours together. Like I said before, Lametta will not be thrown at the tree. Strands are carefully separated and draped over branches creating the appearance of an iced-over tree. This careful way of decoration last roughly until half the tree is finished. Then all bets are off.
If you own a pet, decorate the lower branches at your own peril.
Voilá!
Bringer of presents
Das Christkind (the Christchild) - don't look or he won't come - or the Weihnachtsmann (Christmas man). German children also get treats on 6 December from the Niklaus, who leaves sweets and nuts in shoes.
There is no Christkind anywhere in my Christmas. December 6th is Nikolaus. Children are told to shine their shoes (because children are smart they choose their BIGGEST shoes) and leave them out in the evening. In the morning they will find them filled with toys and sweets. Or if they are anything like me, they will wait up in bed until they are certain their parents have filled the shoes and sneak out to bounce in glee over their shiny. And in the morning pretend to be surprised. And if the parents are smart they will know their kid and stuff a Rute (a small branch from a conifer) in the shoes until they are certain the kid is asleep and then fill the shoes for real. It is mostly for kids but parents gift each other, too.
We also have an Adventskalender. You can either buy one or make your own, some come with chocolate fillings or simply with pictures behind the doors. My favourite homemade calendar was made from matchboxes (see examples). Here are some pictures of homemade Adventskalender to give you an idea.
The four Sundays before Christmas are called Advent. On the first Advent my mother puts out the Christmas decorations. Advent is not something I care about much. There are years when I never decorate my own apartment at all.
The meal
Roast carp with potato salad.
Er, no. Carp is not Christmas food where I am from, it's traditional New Year food. I remember during the GDR years there was a shop that sold live carp before New Year. So for one day we usually had a carp swimming around in our bathtub.
On Christmas eve we usually eat light, so potato salad with sausages (and something vegetarian for me) is not uncommon. For the real family dinner we often eat goose with red cabbage and dumplings (usually of the Thüringer Klöße kind). Well, the family eats goose, I eat everything else, though mostly my mother's homemade red cabbage, because om nom nom.
Last year's family dinner at my sister's. The goose looks pitiful, I know. My sister massacred it. :(
There even exists a story about the Weihnachtsgans Auguste ("Christmas goose Auguste") by GDR author Friedrich Wolf.
Link:
(Link. I hope it works outside of Germany.)
Sweet treats
Stollen, a fluffy fruit cake covered in icing and eaten for breakfast.
Who in their right mind reserves Stollen for breakfast only? Om nom nom. Also, icing? No, just no. When they say icing they mean powdered sugar. The very best Stollen is the original one from Dresden.
Another treat used to be naval oranges and mandarines. I still associate the smell with Christmas. Non-local fruits were very, very rare in the GDR. East Germans and their cravings for bananas used to be a joke West Germans laughed heartily about.
The text reads: Zone-Gabi (17) in luck (FRD): My first banana.
Haha, very funny. Zone AKA Soviet occupation zone, a term you will still hear today (Hi, current co-workers!) and one of the things I have no sense of humour about. At all.
Anyway, let's get back to fruits. So on Christmas eve I would find one or two naval oranges and mandarines on my Weihnachtsteller (Christmas plate) together with chocolate and candy and nuts and other Christmas treats. Like this:
Let us ignore all other Christmas treats because it would take forever. Lebkuchen and Marzipan and Dominosteine and Schokoladenweihnachtsmänner and filled chocolate eggs and Nougat and Zimtsterne and Schmalzkuchen and candied fruit and Kokosmakronen and Plätzchen and Spekulatius and Pfeffernüsse and EVERYTHING. OMNOMNOM.
TV
Germans watch Sissi - Die junge Kaiserin, the story of the empress of Austria, Elisabeth of Bavaria.
Er, do they even show the Sissi movies during Christmas time? Christmas eve is when we watch Drei Haselnüsse für Aschenbrödel again and again and again because it is shown the whole day and you can watch on one channel and at the end hop to another and watch it again. \o/ Best version of the Cinderella fairy tale ever. I will never stop loving this film. I bought the DVD the one year I stayed in Ireland and didn't go home. It is not Christmas without this film.
And when there are no more Czechoslovakian fairy tales on TV, I switch to the Russian ones.
And when there are no more Russian ones, I switch to GDR films.
Who would voluntarily watch Sissi if there are Eastern European/Eastern Bloc fairy tale films on TV?
Other quirks
During December, children go "Niklauslaufen", a sort of trick or treating, asking for sweets in return for a poem.
Nope, wrong region. I had to look this up. Never heard of it before. We also don't do star singing (seriously, it's called "Star boys' singing" in English? Way to exclude girls.). It's a Catholic thing.
There is one special thing my family does, though. It's called Tierweihnacht (Animal Christmas). I have no idea if it's a Thing or just something my parents made up to get me out of the house so they could keep the illusion of a Santa Claus bringing presents alive. So when I was a child my father and I would pack a bag with vegetables and fruits (potatoes, apples, carrots, etc.), thread and a pocket knife and would go into the forest while my mother stayed at home. It used to be a strict father/daughter thing. We would choose a tree and start decorating it with the contents of our bag, always making sure to put some things up high and some things on the lower branches so the different animals could get to our treats.
I never saw other people do this so it may be a particular family tradition. When we got home there would be presents under the tree and my mother would pretend she had no idea where they'd come from. :D
We still do that with the little nieces when they come for the family dinner. Not the presents part, though.
When the family dinner happens at my sister's place, we sometimes go to church in the evening. My father always refuses to go. The rest of the family is basically yeah, whatever about religion while my father has some serious beef with it. It's not a religious thing, though. The oldest German niece is friends with a girl who's part of a Nativity play so we go for her. It's like going to any other amateur stage play, except that half the time you feel utterly out of place/intruding and the other bored out of your skull or fighting the urge to yell at the guy in a robe up front for the stupid stuff he says. Or maybe that's just me.
So this is what my family actually does around Christmas time. And now I have some serious cravings for Christmas treats and the urge to watch fairy tales on youtube for hours and hours, or maybe just to call my mother.
So how do you celebrate Christmas or Hanukkah or Eid or Diwali or Solstice or... any holiday that means something to you? Tell me all about it! :D
PS. Let me know if any of the embedded media doesn't work. I will try to find alternatives.
Originally posted at Dreamwidth. | Comments so far:
| You can use OpenID to comment on Dreamwidth. |