A German Christmas: Part 1

In true German fashion, Christmas is spread out over 3 days to ensure that everyone’s stomach can sample all of Germany´s fine foods and (alcoholic) beverages. The festivities are spread over the 24th to 26th with each day consisting of a special feast...

The 24th is Christmas. We went to Anne´s house and gorged ourselves at a traditional German Christmas complete with a visit from Santa. Anne´s youngest sister Jette recited a poem for the “Christmas Man” which is the cutest thing we have ever seen. We each received a Christmas sack full of German goods before being scolded by Santa and Anne´s grandmother for not knowing any English Christmas poems. Does anyone know any poems for next time? East German Grandmas with sticks are scary.

We dedicate this paragraph to food, which deserves a story of its own. We started with coffee and cakes made by the family before moving on to beer and a few glasses of red. Approaching bursting point we loosened our belts and readied ourselves for the main event. Wiener Würste, potato salad, enough cheese to make the Swiss and Danish jealous, more chocolate, more biscuits, rissoles, pickled vegetables, more wine, more beer and finally a strange alcohol flavoured custard digestive in a chocolate shot glass (would work well with Bailey’s too). Anne´s family reveled in our command of the German language, especially Grandma Schlenzig, who slowly began to forgive us for the poem dilemma. As a side note, Yogi thought he was doing well until he found out they were talking about lobster, when he though they were talking about turkey. Well done, Bear.

So what was in this Christmas sack? Well there were sausages of course, chocolates, biscuits, mustard (!), Jagermeister, Champers and finally our very own Räuchermännchen! What is a Räuchermännchen, you ask?, It translates to a smoking man. It is a hollow wooden figure/object that you can split in half. Inside you put a little incense candle, when you light it and put the top back on it looks like the man is smoking. Other examples include little huts and the immortal smoking grandma at Förtschi´s grandma´s house. I think we were more excited than Jette (Anne’s 9yo sister). To make up for this we helped her tune her new guitar and taught her a deep purple riff.

The day concluded with a trip to a church for a late night service. That´s right….. we went to church. Now we’re probably not the best person to comment on church services… however this service was straight out of Dr Who, complete with a time machine. We arrived late and missed the hymn sheet, so were given many strange looks when we sang Silent Night in English. Finally we managed to get a hymn sheet which exponentially increased the fun as did the Jäger from our Christmas sack. The challenge then became to match the German words to the English hymn. Ben and I felt like Mr Bean singing Hallelujah in the church scene.

Some memorable quotes from the service:
Ben (pointing to the priest): “Is that the Pope?”
Andrew at the stroke of midnight: “Go Jesus, it´s your birthday, we’re going to party like it’s your birthday! If you’ve got a bit of Myrrh put your hand up, if you’ve got some Frankincense put your hands up, if got a little Gold put your hands up, everybody in the church put your hands up!!!”

Finally home, both enlightened and with painful stomachs. When asked how our day was, Yogi replied “Ich habe viel zu viel Weiner Würste gegessen” which loosely translates to I have eaten way too many Wiener Sausages. I was talking about the Vienna sausages, however Ben understandably wet himself at the thought of me having eaten too many Weeners. Not wanting to end the day on a confused note we cracked open a bottle of red and some chocolates and relaxed. A perfect Christmas, and only day one of three…..