Why Germans are so good at Christmas
It’s not just the cold weather. History, sociology, a
particularly German sociability and other rituals make Germany the true
home of Christmas.
‘Tis the season when it becomes obvious yet again: Germans just do
Christmas better. If Christmas were a team sport, the Germans would be
the tinsel-covered, carol-singing, fairy-light-swinging champions of the
world. And that is not a new observation. As one British travel writer
pointed out in 1911: “There is no country in the world where Christmas
is so intensely ‘Christmassy’ as in the Fatherland.”
A British expat living in Berlin today agrees: “Christmas in Germany
is as Christmas in the UK used to be, 40 years ago. Back home,
everything is based on Christmas day. The only rituals around it involve
shopping before and after.”
In Germany, by contrast, shopping is secondary, and the festive
spirit stretches over a whole month, and sometimes longer. Feeling cosy
indoors; drinking hot, spiced alcohol; enjoying colorful lights on a
gloomy afternoon – the German Weihnachten is about all that and more.
The Nazis attacked those they saw as enemies – Jews,
Communists and Socialists – for violating the sanctity of Christmas.
A lot of the world’s contemporary Christmas traditions were
invented in Germany. The Christmas tree is probably the country’s most
successful seasonal export. Germans also made the first glass
Christmas-tree baubles and the first tinsel. Many of the most popular
Christmas carols have German roots. Even Santa Claus has German
ancestry. He was first popularized in drawings by an American political
cartoonist, Thomas Nast, between 1863 and 1886 in Harper’s Weekly. Nast,
however, was a German immigrant and his drawings of Santa, inspired by
his European childhood, combined two figures from the German fest: Saint
Nicholas in his bishop’s robes and the woolly-bearded pagan god Odin,
as he rides through the night on a wild mid-winter hunt.
“The German version of the holiday fused pagan and Christian beliefs
and had ‘deep roots in primordial German soil’,” writes Joseph Perry, a
professor of modern German history at Georgia State University and
author of “Christmas in Germany: A Cultural History.” These national
idiosyncrasies in the German style of celebrating became important in
the 19th century, with the rise of romanticism and nationalism.
“Germany’s late unification in 1871 created an urgent need for some sort
of celebration that might appeal to broad yet diverse groups,” Mr Perry
told Handelsblatt Global. Christmas was that celebration. That’s how it
became “the most German of German holidays.”
That is also why Christmas was useful to the Nazis in the 20th
century. They “could build on the scholarly literature that cast
Christmas as particularly German,” Mr. Perry explains. They also
attacked those they saw as enemies – Jews, Communists and Socialists –
for violating the sanctity of Christmas. The Nazis placed great emphasis
on a truly “authentic” celebration.
Sociologically speaking, Christmas
is infectious. “The lights and candles in winter have an obvious appeal.
And people orient themselves toward other people,” explains Christian
Stegbauer, a sociology professor at the University of Frankfurt, who has
previously studied patterns in local gift giving. “That’s how culture
develops. So if your neighbour puts up Christmas lights, you may do so
too. Every family has their own rituals and over generations, they
stabilize. Then, because of the many small rules around the rituals, and
the fact that so many people are involved, it becomes hard to change
them.”
Germany’s festive styles today vary between regions, and between
Catholics and Protestants. Nonetheless most Germans start celebrating
what used to be Yuletide from the beginning of December, or even earlier
if you count November’s “lantern festival” as a prelude. Each Sunday in
December, they light an additional candle on a decorative wreath. They
receive visits from Saint Nicholas in early December, and from the
dreaded Krampus, a demonic figure who keeps track of whether children
have been naughty or nice. Many Germans go to dedicated church services,
bake cookies and cakes and visit Christmas markets.
“As a parent, I would say Christmas here is so big because there are
so many little rituals and they’re all jammed into one month,” says a
New York native, who has lived in Germany for over a decade and has
three children. “When you have kids, you just go from one Christmas
event to another. In the US, some people might do some of the things –
but here everybody does everything. You can’t escape it.”
Despite religious overtones, the inadvertent focus of most of these
German rituals is community and family, not consumerism. It’s also about
a “German version of public sociability and a culture of politeness,”
says Mr. Perry, of a sort that Americans, in his opinion, do not share.
“Christmas is bound up with the feeling that ‘we’ have always
celebrated Christmas this way,” writes Daniel Miller, a British
anthropologist, in his German-language book, “Christmas: The Global
Celebration.” Germans are convinced that they should celebrate the way
they did when they were children. So once a year, all of Germany turns
into a nostalgic fairy tale.
And yet, this wouldn’t be Germany without regular soul-searching
essays in the German media about whether all these small, family-focused rituals have become inherently meaningless. But meaning
is in the eye of the beholder. And this week, as every year, millions of
beholders, German and foreign alike, in the middle of Europe, are in
search of that elusive nostalgic joy. They know that Germany – more than
any manger in Bethlehem – is the true home of the modern Christmas.
Cathrin Schaer is an editor at Handelsblatt Global.
