T is for 'Tis the Season

 

So this is Christmas - and what have you done?

I didn't even thought to start this post with these words, but the moments my fingers hit the keyboard, that old John Lennon song came to mind and the words were staring back from the screen to me. And of course, now the song is stuck in my head!

Here we are in December, it's a mere 12 days til Christmas. We call this season "Adventszeit" in Germany and it certainly is the time when I miss my native country the most. No one can do Christmas like Germany. I spent the Christmas season in several countries, but the magic happens in Germany.

Christmas has largely lost its magic for us, but one thing we do every year the day after Thanksgiving is hanging lights on our home and garden fence. The Geek and Kaefer used to do it together, but since the girl moved to Germany, the Geek has been doing it on his own (no, I am not climbing on the roof). He always gets a ton of compliments; some evening dog walkers told us that they explicitly walk this route in order to admire our lights. It does bring cheer and brightness into this corner of our street.

Kaefer, who is sad that the Christmas market is closed in Munich for the second year due to COVID, sent us a "care package" with all the wonderful German sweets that we like so much. Isn't she a darling girl?

She has had some snow in Munich and sent us pictures of the tiny snowman she had made.

In my German class we had talked about the Christmas markets, the cookies and, of course, Glühwein (mulled wine). So this past Saturday - our last class before the winter break - I invited all of them home for some Glühwein. We sat outside, it was sunny but chilly - at least the temperatures resembled a little bit the Christmas market atmosphere. 

There were Christmas cookies, gebrannte Mandeln (roasted almonds) and Lebkuchen.

On the stove the Glühwein was heating up (red wine, oranges, cloves and cinnamon; everybody sweetens their Glühwein to taste).

I had pulled out the few mugs that I had bought at the Tübingen Christmas market years ago. Each year I would buy a mug and then stroll along the streets with all the booths and get regular refills of Glühwein.

Guess what? This is my ticket for Elizabeth and the T gang!

We had a great time.

I enjoy showing my students our German traditions and introduce them to some of them. Plus, it's a great excuse for getting together outside of school.

A Good Day

My dear friends, I've run out of apologies except for the "this is life" one that seems to happen always around this time of the year. Why is it that the season that should be calm and peaceful always tends to be anything but? It's hectic with busy and full days... you can't even do regular grocery shopping anymore without running into crowds and waiting in line at the checkout. When I think of Advent and the pre-Christmas season I always imagine beauty, candlelight, peacefulness, hot chocolate and cookies.

Nothing of that - except for the hot chocolate - did happen this year.

Instead we were all in an insane run for - what? Kaefer has been spending hours at the computer, filling out applications for the universities she thinks may be a good fit for her. Finals will be this week, so she's studying for long hours. Last day of school will be on Thursday and then on Friday night she will have a potluck and a night hike with the TeenNat program at the nature preserve she spent her summer internship at - that's a nice event and she looks forward to that. It's a good start for the winter break as well.

I had my last class a week ago, but still spend many hours preparing for the artisan holiday fair. One of the last things I made were these ornaments.

It was a lot of fun creating these - I just love to "invent" these little winter scenes and fill them with moose, howling wolves, trees, a full moon, cats and snowmen. Some even got the Big Dipper.

I did a practice set up of my table, took pictures of it - and promptly forgot to print the photos and take them with me! So I had to set up from memory which actually wasn't too difficult.

The fair turned out to be a really good day. Since I sold at this fair last year I knew that it was a good one, but it by far exceeded my expectations. I actually ran out of some of my items - note to myself, knit more hats in more colors. I even sold the hat I was wearing! The things I expected to sell like the hedgehog mittens didn't move at all!

I guess this part of Northern California is not a good location for hedgehog mittens! This is luck for my two little nieces in Germany who will each get a pair for Christmas! They do need mittens in Germany!

In the end I was very happy with my sales and the entire day. The vendors next to us were lovely and we had quite some fun together. The entertainment program was excellent and we even did some dancing! What more can you ask for?

Kaefer was my assistant again - perhaps for the last time since next year she probably will be off to college. It will be very different and only half the fun without her.

Made in Germany 36 - Advent in the Streets

Yesterday we celebrated the First of Advent.

Advent is a time that is quite important in Germany. Families have an advent wreath in their homes, and each Sunday a further candle will be lit until all four candles a glowing their beautiful warm light. The towns and cities are decorated festively. Some really go the extra mile, some have more basic little lights like this one here, in the Unterstadt ("lower town") of Tübingen. Christmas markets are making their appearances, the small local ones often much more beautiful than the big ones in Nürnberg or München. Children walk the streets singing Christmas carols. If we're lucky, there's even some snow to further add to this special atmosphere. There is Glühwein (spiced mulled wine) and gingerbread.

Wishing all of you a wonderful Advent.

Advent Weekend

I haven't been to my blog very often the past week. Two posts, and that's about it. It wasn't intended this way, though... but my body had different ideas than my mind. I had a horrible cough for some weeks and finally went to the doctor who prescribed a powerful mixture of anti-histamine and codeine that fortunately started to kick in quickly. On the downside, however, it made me awfully tired, so I concentrated the bit of energy I had on the most urgent and important things. But now I'm back and I'm happy about it.

Advent has definitely arrived in our family. On the first Advent weekend Kaefer put up the Christmas village in front of our fireplace

while I had fun arranging our traditional Advent decoration.

The arch with the candles on top is a so-called Schwibbogen. In the front you can see a Christmas pyramid. The heat of the candles get the wings started and the little singers turn around the church in the middle. These things are tricky! They usually work very well in the beginning, but eventually they don't turn anymore and the wings start smoldering - you can see that this already happened to our pyramid. Those of you who have read about my childhood advent certainly think now that we play a lot with fire... All these little pieces are handmade of wood in the Erzgebirge, the ore-mountain region in the eastern part of Germany. While you can buy them everywhere now, it was more difficult to get them before the wall came down. We got some of our little angels and singers from a family in former East Germany whom we regularly sent parcels.

These are the angels of the ore-mountain art. We have a small orchestra by now and I love these little figurines very much. They are authentic German traditional art.

Last Saturday the Geek put up the Christmas Lights on our house. Now, this is the very first time that we actually decorate our house this way. The Geek had found these lights dirt dirt cheap after last Christmas (I think he paid $0.37 for each strand of lights, and that includes tax!), they are LED (otherwise he wouldn't have bought them) and since we don't have any proper fixings to put them up, the Geek, inventive guy that he is, fastened them with paper clips. Yes, you read that right, paper clips. Not the cheap ones, but the good old ones from Manufactum (oh praise to German "engineering").

It worked!

And this is the decoration at our doorstep:

We have a Fall-Advent here. I was first thinking of spray painting the pumpkins in gold, but rather have the natural look. After all, this is coastal NorCal.

Yesterday we finally got our Christmas tree. It was a rainy day, so we didn't go to cut our own tree but chose from the many many trees of a locally owned business.

Kaefer is the one in our family who decorates the tree.

She went to the ice arena afterwards and witnessed the tree lighting ceremony with Snoopy and Woodstock, skating for four hours with her friends. She absolutely loves it and we are grateful that we have this wonderful old-fashioned ice arena in our town.

While my little one did her freezing exercise I prepared the St. Nick's gifts for my neighbors. Today is Nikolaus as we call it in Germany and the kids find one of their shoes filled with sweets, nuts and oranges in the morning. I introduced this tradition to my neighborhood in 2001 in a slightly different way - they find a little bag of German sweets on their front porch in the morning of December 6th. This year I also included a Starbucks frappuccino bottle that I decorated and filled with cocoa powder and mini marshmallows.

Some of our neighbors play Nikolaus for us - this is what I found at my doorstep this morning (the boot belongs to Kaefer and was filled by her loving parents).

I am so thankful for my wonderful neighbors! I love them!

This has turned into a pretty long post, I hope you're not cross-eyed! I just wanted to share this with you. You are such wonderful blogger friends!

Happy St. Nick's to you!

Vision and Verb: Advent

It happens every other Saturday - I'm over at Vision and Verb. Today I'm writing about our Advent traditions in Germany. I would love you to come over and take a peak.