Advent and Markets

The German Festival Year

Course 1 · Chapter 2 · Advent and the Christmas Markets

The German festival year begins, for most visitors, in late November, when wooden stalls go up in town squares and the smell of mulled wine and gingerbread fills the cold air. Advent is the four-week run-up to Christmas, and Germany has given the world several of its best-known customs: the Advent wreath, the paper Advent calendar, the Christmas market and, with some qualification, the Christmas tree. This chapter follows each one and asks, as the course does throughout, what the earliest written record is. Names, dates and figures are from general knowledge and flagged "check".

Advent at Home

The Advent wreath

A wreath with four candles, one lit on each Sunday of Advent. It is usually traced to the Protestant pastor Johann Hinrich Wichern, who in 1839 hung a wheel of candles in the Rauhes Haus, a home for poor children in Hamburg; the fir-branch version came later (check the dates and details).

The Advent calendar

A calendar with a door or pocket for each day from 1 to 24 December. Printed calendars are often credited to Gerhard Lang, a Munich printer, in the early 1900s, with chocolate versions common after the Second World War (check the dates). Earlier home-made counting customs existed.

The Nikolaus shoe

On the night of 5 to 6 December children clean a shoe and put it outside the door, and find it filled with sweets and small gifts from St Nicholas the next morning (check regional variants).

St Nicholas, the Christkind and the Weihnachtsmann

  • St Nicholas (6 December). Based on a bishop of Myra in what is now Turkey, remembered as a giver of gifts. In many German homes he visits on 6 December, with a book of the year's good and bad deeds (check).
  • Companions. He is sometimes accompanied by a dark figure, called Knecht Ruprecht in northern and central Germany, who carries a rod or a sack. In Bavaria and Austria the companion is the horned Krampus, with Krampus runs in early December (check the regions, and the origin stories, which are disputed and often claimed as pagan without proof).
  • The Christkind. The gift-bringer on Christmas Eve in many Catholic regions and also in Protestant homes. A story says that Martin Luther promoted the Christ child to replace the saint after the Reformation, but the evidence is thin (check).
  • The Weihnachtsmann. A bearded figure like Father Christmas or Santa Claus, more common in the north and east, and shaped by 19th-century German and American images (check).

The Christmas Markets

Market (check each)Note
Dresden, StriezelmarktClaims to be the oldest in Germany, with a first record in 1434. The name comes from Striezel, a local word for a stollen loaf. A stollen festival is held on the Saturday before the second Advent Sunday.
Bautzen and FrankfurtBautzen's Wenceslas Market is dated to 1384 and Frankfurt's market is said to have been recorded in 1393. Both dates are claimed, and the records should be checked.
Nuremberg, ChristkindlesmarktOne of the best known, with a "Christkind" who opens the market from the Frauenkirche balcony. Records of the market date to the 1600s (check), and the Christkind figure is more recent.
Cologne, Munich, Berlin and many moreHundreds of markets across the country. A figure such as "about 2,500" is often quoted, and should be treated as an estimate (check).
What can be said Winter markets are recorded in German-speaking towns from the late Middle Ages, but they were originally ordinary trade fairs for winter supplies, not Christmas events. The "Christmas market" with a Christmas label and a focus on gifts, sweets and toys took shape in the 1500s to 1800s and became a national image in the 1800s and 1900s (check). A claim of "the oldest Christmas market" depends on whether the earlier fair counts, which is why the dates above are contested.

What You Find at a Market

  • Drinks. Glühwein (hot spiced wine), Kinderpunsch for children and Feuerzangenbowle, where a sugar loaf soaked in rum is set alight over the wine (check).
  • Food. Lebkuchen (spiced gingerbread, with Nuremberg's the best known), Stollen (a fruit loaf, Dresden's a protected speciality, check), roasted almonds, and sausages such as Nuremberg's small Rostbratwürste.
  • Crafts. Wooden figures, nutcrackers, smoking men, Christmas pyramids and candle arches from the Erzgebirge (Ore Mountains) in Saxony, a woodworking region with a long record (check).
  • Mugs. Many markets sell Glühwein in a mug with a deposit, and each market has its own design (check).

The Christmas Tree

Claim or record (check each)Note
Guild and town records, 1400s and 1500sSeveral German towns, such as Freiburg and Bremen, have records of decorated trees at guild houses, but it is unclear whether these were Christmas trees or other festivals (check).
Strasbourg, 1605A visitor's account describes fir trees set up in rooms at Christmas with paper roses, apples and sweets. It is one of the earliest descriptions usually cited (check; the city was then part of the Holy Roman Empire).
1800sThe tree spreads through Protestant Germany and then through Europe and America. In Britain it is popularised by royal use, with an 1848 picture of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert's tree widely reproduced (check).
CandlesReal candles were used until electric lights replaced them in the 1900s, and some families still use wax candles (check).

"The Christmas tree is a German invention" is therefore an arguable claim. The evidence points to the Upper Rhine region in the 1500s and 1600s, but it is a custom that grew over time, not an invention with a date and an inventor. Claims of pagan tree worship are claimed more often than shown.

A British comparison Edinburgh's winter season includes a Christmas market with German-style stalls, and similar markets now run in many British cities (check). They are a modern import: the Christmas tree reached Britain only in the 1800s, and the market model largely after the 1990s. In Scotland, Hogmanay long rivalled Christmas in importance, so a visitor from Edinburgh may notice how central Advent is in Germany compared with the quieter run-up they know.
Check the details Market dates, first records and visitor figures are advertised in ways that favour a good story, and the "oldest" claims are disputed. Check the opening dates and details with the town's official pages, and treat "first recorded" claims as claims until a source is named. Markets are public events, and security rules and layouts have changed in recent years (check).

Exercises

Exercise 1

List five Advent customs from this chapter, and for each give the earliest date or person usually named and say how well documented it is.

→ Solution
Exercise 2

Write a short plan for testing the claim "The Christmas tree is a German invention": what counts as a Christmas tree, what evidence to look for and what a careful sentence would say.

→ Solution
Exercise 3

Compare a German Christmas market with a British one you know or have read about: what was borrowed, what was changed and what is missing.

→ Solution

Quick Reference

  • Advent wreath: Wichern, Hamburg, 1839 (check)
  • Advent calendar: printed versions credited to Gerhard Lang, Munich, early 1900s (check)
  • 6 December: St Nicholas; Knecht Ruprecht and Krampus as companions in some regions
  • Markets: winter fairs since the late Middle Ages; Dresden 1434 claimed (check)
  • Tree: Upper Rhine records from the 1500s and 1600s; a custom, not a dated invention