German Christmas Traditions

A German Christmas starts weeks before December 25: with a wreath of candles on the table, a calendar of little doors, a market in the town square and a pair of boots left out for St. Nicholas. The high point comes on Christmas Eve, not Christmas Day. Several of these customs began in Germany and spread around the world. This guide follows them through the season in order, from the first candle on the wreath to the presents on the evening of the 24th.

The Advent wreath

When: From the first Sunday of Advent, the fourth Sunday before Christmas, until Christmas Eve.

What people do: A wreath of fir branches with four candles, the Adventskranz, sits on the table. One candle is lit on the first Sunday of Advent, two on the second, and so on, until all four burn on the last Sunday before Christmas. Many families light them over coffee and cookies or a slice of Stollen, sometimes with a carol.

Where it comes from: Unusually for a folk custom, this one has a known inventor. In 1839, Johann Hinrich Wichern, a Protestant theologian, made the first Advent wreath at the Rauhes Haus, a home he had founded for poor children near Hamburg. His version had four big white candles for the Sundays and a small red candle for every weekday before Christmas, so the children could count the days. Families who copied it at home kept only the four Sunday candles, and from 1860 the wreath was dressed with fir greenery.

Our card Advent Candles shows a German window on an Advent night: four red candles on the wreath, a carved candle arch, a cat asleep on its cushion.

The Advent calendar

When: December 1 to 24.

What people do: Children open one door, window or little packet each day until Christmas Eve. There are calendars of pictures, of chocolate, of small toys, and homemade ones that parents fill themselves.

Where it comes from: The habit of counting down the days grew up in Protestant parts of Germany in the mid-19th century. The simplest form was 24 chalk marks on a door frame, one rubbed out each day. The printed calendar is linked to a Munich publisher, Gerhard Lang, whose calendar Im Lande des Christkindes (“In the Land of the Christ Child”) appeared in 1908: children cut out a picture each day and stuck it on a card. The story goes that the idea came from his mother, who once gave him a piece of card with 24 little meringue cookies fixed to it, one for each day.

Christmas markets

When: From late November, around four weeks before Christmas Eve.

What people do: Wooden stalls fill the old town squares. People meet friends after work for a mug of Glühwein, mulled wine, eat something warm from the stalls, and shop for regional crafts, handmade decorations and mouth-blown glass. The best known include Nuremberg’s Christkindlesmarkt and Dresden’s Striezelmarkt.

Where it comes from: Markets before Christmas go back to the Middle Ages. The Striezelmarkt was first mentioned in 1434, as a one-day market on the Monday before Christmas where people could buy meat for the Christmas meal after the Advent fast. Its name comes from Strüzel, an old name for the fruit loaf now called Stollen. It’s often described as one of the oldest Christmas markets in Germany, though other towns have long histories of their own.

St. Nicholas Day

When: December 6, Nikolaustag. The boots go out on the evening of December 5.

What people do: Children clean their boots or shoes and put them outside the door before bed. In the morning they find them filled with fruit, sweets or a small present, left by St. Nicholas and, in the old stories, his gruff companion Knecht Ruprecht.

Where it comes from: The custom honors Nicholas, a bishop of Myra in Asia Minor in the first half of the 4th century. Legends tell of his secret gifts to the poor, such as the dowries he secretly left for a poor family’s daughters. From the 12th century, children were given small presents on his feast day, and for a long time December 6, not Christmas, was the day for children’s gifts.

The Christmas tree

When: Through the Christmas season, at its brightest on Christmas Eve.

What people do: The tree, the Weihnachtsbaum or Christbaum, is decorated with glass baubles, called Christbaumkugeln, and wooden figures, and lit with candles or candle-shaped lights.

Where it comes from: The Goethe-Institut dates the decorated tree in Germany to the 16th century, when fir branches were hung with apples, paper flowers and nuts. Exactly where and when the first one stood is not known. The custom then traveled: in Britain it became fashionable after a picture of Queen Victoria and her German-born husband, Prince Albert, with a decorated tree was published in 1848.

Christmas Eve: the heart of it

When: December 24, Heiligabend. It isn’t an official public holiday, but shops close early and many people take the day off.

What people do: Many families go to church in the late afternoon or evening. Then comes the Bescherung, the giving of presents, on Christmas Eve itself rather than on Christmas morning. Dinner can be anything from potato salad with sausages, a simple meal that leaves time for everything else, to roast goose or duck with dumplings and red cabbage. December 25 and 26 are both public holidays, the first and second days of Christmas, kept for family visits and long meals.

Who brings the presents: It depends on where you are. In much of northern and central Germany it’s the Weihnachtsmann, a Father Christmas figure; in the west and south it has long been the Christkind, the Christ Child, often pictured as an angel with golden curls. The Christkind is often credited to Martin Luther, who rejected the veneration of saints and wanted gifts to come in Christ’s name rather than from St. Nicholas. Historians are more careful: Luther wrote about it, but there’s no evidence he invented it, and folklorists describe a slow cultural shift instead. The twist is that a figure born in Protestant homes later became the gift-bringer of Catholic regions such as Bavaria and the Rhineland.

Keeping the tradition far from home

German customs are some of the easiest to carry abroad, because so many of them already live in the home:

• Make an Advent wreath. Four candles on a ring of greenery, lit on the Sundays of Advent, is the simplest German tradition there is.
• Put out the boots on December 5. A clementine, a few nuts and a chocolate in each shoe is all St. Nicholas needs.
• Give presents on Christmas Eve. If your family lives between two cultures, opening gifts on the evening of the 24th is a lovely way to keep the German side, and you can still have stockings in the morning.
• Bake together. Cookies through Advent and a Stollen sliced on Sunday afternoons make the kitchen smell like home.
• Find a market. German-style Christmas markets now open in many American and British cities. A mug of Glühwein in the cold may be the closest you get to the square at home.

The Christmas greeting in German

The German for Merry Christmas is Frohe Weihnachten; a relaxed alternative is Frohes Fest, “happy holidays”. Our guide to writing Frohe Weihnachten in a card explains why it isn’t Frohes Weihnachten, how to address Oma and Opa, and how Germans sign off.

Cards for a German Christmas

Our cards from Germany are painted scenes of an old-fashioned Advent: a window with four candles, a market square at night with its lit carousel. Frohe Weihnachten is set on each one as text, with space below for a few lines of your own. Send it in time for the first Sunday of Advent, or schedule it to arrive on Christmas Eve, for the Bescherung.