The Christmas Season

When I went grocery shopping on Friday, the check-out clerk was already wishing everyone a "Happy 3rd Advent!"

The whole Advent period (technically the four "Advent Sundays" leading up to Christmas, hence the phrase "3rd Advent" to refer to the third of those weekends) is huge here, Christmas in Germany being essentially an entire season of the year unto itself.

Putting an even more precise start date to the Christmas season, a friend recently informed me that Christmas markets, though they start setting up in November, are not allowed to turn their lights on until after "Totensonntag" (Sunday of the Dead – a Lutheran holiday that's always the last Sunday before the four Advent Sundays...got that?)

Yes, Germany is gradually giving way to commercialism, and the first Christmas cookies do start sneaking their way into the grocery stores in September. (Though you should see the stores NOW – I swear, roughly half of my nearest supermarket is devoted to Christmas chocolates, while on the other hand the baking section has been nearly been picked clean by eager Christmas cookie bakers.)

And yes, as in any majority-Christian country, December is a time of buying gifts. (On a couple – not all – of the Advent weekends, major stores are actually open SUNDAYS, something almost inconceivable in Germany.)

But even more than that, December really is a time when Germans do all those traditional, cozy, Christmas-season kinds of things, and the four Advent weekends are earnestly dedicated to Christmas cookie baking (a major event itself, in which friends descend on one person's kitchen, all bearing their own recipes and ingredients, and proceed to make multiple varieties of cookies simultaneously, in a flurry of activity so overwhelming, I managed to bow out of it entirely this year) and afternoon cookie-and-warm-drink Christmas parties and so many Christmas market visits that you actually lose count, and of course lots and lots of mulled wine.

Then of course there's Nikolaustag (St. Nicholas Day, December 6), when children leave shoes out overnight and find them filled with sweets in the morning – something I always found a bit bizarre, until a Dutch friend pointed out, Yeah, we have shoes, and the Americans have stockings. Oh. Right.

When I went to the post office in early December to mail a package of Chanukah presents to my parents in the U.S. and asked how long it would take to get there, the woman said, Well, it'll be a little late if you're sending it for Nikolaus. I told her, no, I was sending it for Chanukah (though of course she'd have no idea what that means) and smiled privately at the idea that I would be sending a package to my family – my American, not to mention Jewish, family – for St. Nicholas Day.

Then, to round out the whole holiday season, there's Heilige Drei Könige (the day of the "Holy Three Kings," who we know as the Three Wise Men; i.e. Epiphany or Twelfth Night), when kids go around dressed as the three wise men, singing songs and writing blessings in holy chalk (not kidding) over people's doors. I think this is more common in western and southern Germany (which is Catholic), because I haven't seen much of it here in Berlin.