Christmas in Germany

So it's been a while... but I've really just been so busy with the holiday season that the two weeks since my last blog have flown by. My three month mark was last Saturday and I still can't believe it's almost Christmas. Actually, life around here is actually starting to feel so normal that I haven't really had much to write about! Also, this blog entry is promising to be scatterbrained and unorganized. I apologize. And in case anyone is wondering, it's snowed almost every day for the last three weeks and doesn't show any sign of slowing down. We probably have around a foot to a foot and a half of snow, but since everything is in metric here I really have no idea. But anyway, onto my post:

Christmas in Germany is a BIG deal. In a lot of ways it's similar to the US, but there are also a lot of things that are unique to Germany.

Weihnachtsmarkts:
Weihnachtsmarkts are probably one of the most well known German Christmas traditions. A Weihnachtsmarkt is kind of a combination of an outdoor craft fair and a carneval, with lots and lots of Glühwein and delicious food like fried almonds rolled in sugar, chocolate covered fruit, candies, bread, and lots more. There's also of course lots of wurst and various other meats... but we won't talk about that. Crafters come and sell their goods from little stalls... mostly Christmas decorations, but also pottery and stonework and candles and knitted things. And there are sometimes ferris wheels and merry go rounds and carneval games. By now some of you have probably seen my photos from various Weihnachtsmarkts around Germany... if you haven't, head over to SmugMug and check them out! Over the last few weeks I've been to Weihnachtsmarkts in Dresden, Cottbus, and Spremberg, and I'm headed to some in Berlin this weekend. Weihnachstsmarkts are awesome, but unfortunately the weather has been awful every time I've gone to one... I'm pressing my thumbs for good weather this weekend.


die Schule/Hanukkah/Separation of Church and State:
This is one of the most striking differences between Christmas in America and Christmas in Germany... it's generally assumed here that EVERYONE celebrates Christmas, and we're allowed to have school Christmas parties and some teachers have Advent wreaths in their rooms and we sing Christmas songs in music class. I've asked about Hanukkah and a lot of people have never heard of it... and actually most people I've talked to don't even know any Jewish people (or at most they know one or two). And Kwanzaa definitely doesn't exist. Christmas is also not really associated with Christianity... of course there are Christian people who probably celebrate Christmas in a more religious way than others, but here in the former DDR a lot of families, including my host family, aren't religious at all but wouldn't dream of not celebrating Christmas. Of course there are a ton of nonreligious people who still celebrate Christmas in the US, but it seems that here Christmas is even less associated with religion than in America.

Räuchermännchen:
A cool Christmas decoration here in Germany that I've never seen in the US are Räuchermännchen. A Räuchermännchen is a handcrafted wooden figure, usually a man or woman or santa claus (the Weihnachtsmann) or a snowman. They come in all sorts of vareties, from traditional Christmas figurines to bakers or mechanics or German soccer fans at the world cup. They're hollow inside with holes in their mouths. You put a special candle inside and the incense smoke comes out through the mouth and fills the room with lovely Christmas smells. My host family has a bunch of them and you can always find them for sale at Weihnachtsmarkts... There are photos on SmugMug :)

Weihnachtslieder:
Germans sing a combination of German and American Christmas songs... thanks to Frau Heath I already know a bunch of the words to the German ones :) Check out Oh Du Fröhliche or Kling Glöckchen on youtube for examples.

St. Niklaus Tag:
In Germany and various other European countries the 6th of December is St. Niklaus Tag! It's a lovely holiday that we unfortunately don't have in the US, and it's kind of a precursor to Christmas. The night before the 6th, children clean their shoes and leave them by the door for the Niklausmann. Then, if they've been good, Niklaus brings them chocolate and sweets and leaves them in their shoes! Ramona and I cleaned our shoes together and I woke up to chocolate goodies the next morning :)

Plätzchen/Stollen
My host mom and I have been baking up a storm for the last few weeks... every day a new type of cookie. Cookies only really exist here during the Christmas season, and they're called Plätzchen. They're always some form of sugar cookie, sometimes with nuts or marzipan or ginger, and then we decorate them with sugar or chocolate on top. There's also photos on SmugMug :) And then Stolle is a special kind of Christmas baked good here in Germany. I want to say it's almost like fruitcake, because it's not very sweet and it has raisins and dried fruit in it and mostly only adults like it. A lot of people make it themselves but it takes FOREVER and is really complicated... and then it has to sit for at least a week before it's ready to eat! So we bought ours from the bakery :) There's also a photo on SmugMug.

Weihnachtskarten:
Christmas cards are a tradition here as well as in the US, but my host mom makes them all by hand and each is unique. There's a lot of time and care and craft involved and I really like the fact that they're not all store-bought and mass-manufactured like the ones most people buy in the US. Maria and I also made one each. Actually, in general Germans make a lot more things from scratch and by hand, especially when it comes to food and gifts. It's a lot more personal and I really like it :)

Advent:
In the US I experienced Advent only as a Christian, churchy thing... each of the four Sundays before Christmas they would light one more candle at church, and that was pretty much it. Sometimes we had an advent weath at home. But here Advent is totally not associated with church and people wish you a happy first or second or third or fourth Advent and everyone has Advent candles, even some teachers at school like I've already said. It's kind of cool and definitely a difference I wouldn't have expected.


So, that is my rambling on German Christmas... and there is certainly more information to come because it's only the 14th of December. But as for a general update on things... I've been in Germany for three months now and I honestly have started crying just thinking about the fact that I only have seven months left. I haven't felt homesick since early October. I'm really happy with my language skills. I'm still going to my German tutor and I think she's really helped me to make a lot of progress. I think I'm almost to the point where I can start functioning as a normal student at school. I got the equivalent of an A on my math Klausur (kind of like a Midterm exam) and the equivalent of a B on a test for music class, which included an essay analyzing how the musical composition of an opera related to its plot. I understand 80-90% of what's going on around me when I really focus. I very rarely use a dictionary in everyday conversations. Even when I don't know a word, most of the time I can understand the German explanation of what the word means enough to figure it out. I'm swimming and cycling and I may start yoga on Wednesdays (shout out to Mr. Milligan, I miss you and your awesome math class!). I have really great friends and a boyfriend, Patrick... aka Pati. And thanks to him I experienced my first ever romantic candlelit dinner last weekend. I'm planning to go to a few punk concerts in the coming months and I am excited. Biking to school in the snow is not fun at all, and they don't plow very well here. Luckily Pati drives me to school now a lot of the time. I was invited to a party for Silvester (New Years Eve).

Life is really, really good.