Every year in December, I can’t help but miss my hometown Nürnberg. Growing up in a city that, during Advent, magically transforms into a sort of Christmas Wonderland was an experience that turned me into a Christmas addict for life – an addiction that proved, moreover, to be much longer lasting than my once fierce faith in the religious beliefs that usually go along with such addictions.
But how could I not become an addict? After sunset on the Friday before the first Advent, all the lights go off on the city’s central square—the Hauptmarkt—and an angel-like woman with long golden locks, a crown, and a long glittering dress solemnly appears on the balcony of the adjoining Frauenkirche, “Church of our Lady.” Below, thousands of people who, now icy cold, had probably just had a quarrel with one of the other market visitors over who deserves the better view… turn quiet and gaze upward.
“You ladies and you gentlemen, who were children once, and you little ones at the beginning of that journey called life,” the figure called Christkind starts reciting. So begins the famous prologue that officially opens the market below. It ends with the simple but utterly hospitable words, “and who here comes, shall be most welcome here.”
Until December 24, the city center remains full of the enticing smells of booths selling “3 im Weggla” (three small bratwursts in a roll), the original Lebkuchen (gingerbread), or Glühwein (hot mulled wine) to warm you up after browsing the many other booths offering traditional Christmas tree decorations, funny little men made of dried prunes, or gifts from all over the world, which can be found at the Sister Cities’ Market right next to the main market. Add to that horse-drawn carriage rides through the medieval city center, the Children’s Christmas Market with an old-fashioned merry-go-round, and my personal favorite, the Lantern Procession of about a thousand children who make their way up to the medieval castle towering over the city, where they then help set the stage for a telling of the Christmas story.
In other words, it’s no surprise that I really missed this ever since I moved to the United States. And, of course, every December I look here for my Christmas fix. Which is why I was thrilled when I found out a few years ago that Chicago, one of my favorite US cities, had an annual Christmas market. Not only that, but they even invited the Nürnberger Christkind of Christmas Past to officially open the American version of the yearly highlight from my childhood! I clearly had to go and check this out for myself, and so, one cold December night in the early 2000s, I stood alone on Daley Plaza with many Americans awaiting the arrival of the Christkind, surrounded by the famed skyscrapers of bustling downtown Chicago.
The windy city did not dim its lights that night. The market was just one more spectacle in the midst of the spectacular brightness of the city, which most definitely still stank of cars — not sausages and spiced wine. While waiting I watched what must have been the largest elves in human history performing a Christmas medley on a stage framed on one side by the square’s monumental, fifty-foot high Picasso statue and, on the other, the—of course!—largest Christmas tree of the world, waiting to be lit. And then, while the giant elves were still awkwardly trying to find a way to step down safely from the stage, the Christkind appeared. Unlike the giant elves, I immediately thought, she was no match for the big-city backdrop. Neither was her opening prologue—even though they had come up with a decent English translation. Some people near me were so entirely unimpressed by her that they rudely started to chant, “light the tree, light the tree!” Other people around me started wondering who she was supposed to be: a fairy? an angel? Mother Nature? Even I had to laugh at that last suggestion.
It was a perfect example of the cultural differences between Germany and the United States. Chicago was simply not the space for a contemplative ceremony. Still, it had started to snow and the ceremony was beautiful, but in a big way—nicely finished off with the tree lighting and with fireworks that rained down upon us from the top floor of the surrounding high-rise buildings .
Since then I have long made my peace with the Christkind not showing up in my new home. I don’t really think about it at all, to be frank. A couple of weeks ago, however, my students and I listened to a talk by a fragile and, at the same time, very fierce lady. She stood in front of a group of about fifty people who had come to the Holocaust Memorial Center in Farmington Hills nearby Detroit to hear her story of survival.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” she addressed us repeatedly, looking us straight in the eye, while she shared the story of how she had lost her parents. She demonstrated the exact hand movement she used to wave goodbye to her brothers for the very last time, and told about how, in one camp, the Nazis managed to rob her of even the passport size picture of her mother that she had managed until then to hide safely in her fist throughout this part of her ordeal, which took place when she was just thirteen years old.
Our tour guide had encouraged us beforehand to ask her why she was wearing a hat, so one of us did. She hesitated, but then briefly explained that her mother had loved fashionable hats. As a tribute to her mother’s memory, she has worn one every single time she leaves her home. She then briefly thanked us for our interest and told us that she wanted to hug every one of us before we left. People stood up and approached her, but she went straight to the only two veiled Muslim women in the audience, who were about to leave, and eagerly embraced them first.
A few days earlier one of my Muslim students had confided to me that she was about to fill up her car at the gas station in Dearborn, the city where she had grown up, when a stranger rolled down his window and yelled at her, “You can take off that veil now, you know! Trump is our president!” I had to think of that story when I witnessed all this and, in a rush of Christmas sentimentality, the thought popped into my head that I had found my Christkind for this year: It was a lady with hair as white as snow and a very pretty black hat.