Fourth Sunday in Advent

Can you see who's looking over the balcony?

To celebrate the fourth and last Sunday in Advent, I visited the Dresden Stadtmuseum (city museum), where they have an exhibition on the history of Advent calenders and other Christmas handcrafts.  The precursors to Advent calendars included paper "leaves" with Bible verses that could be added to a "tree" of needles stuck in a rod.  In 1902 in Munich was printed for the first time a calendar of numbered rectangles with one card to be torn out of a booklet and pasted on for each day.  A neat version of this was a nativity scene with figures to be cut out each day and pasted over their outlines, sort of like an Advent-calendar-creche two-in-one.

Unsurprisingly, these objects reflect their times.  The earliest ones were of course religious, and many began with December 6, Saint Nicholas Day.  By the 1920s, secular calendars with "windows" to open and pictures of toys had become quite popular.  Angels, der Weihnachtsmann (Father Christmas)*, elves, snowy winter landscapes, and homey family scenes were other common themes.  Sometimes the image behind the window was printed on translucent paper, and the calendar was meant to be hung in a window for the sunlight to shine through.

Probably the creepiest thing I've seen in a long time was the booklet produced during World War II by the National Socialists, who wanted to focus honor and attention only on themselves (a key tenet of fascism: not the Party above all else but the Party and nothing else).  It included a poem about German war dead visiting the Christmas celebrations of good German families just for one night--der Heiligen Abend (Christmas Eve)--and then going back to their solemn watch over das Volk.  It was accompanied by an illustration of a shadowy soldier figure and a Hakenkreuz made out of the flames of the candles of the Advent wreath.

During the DDR, religious themes were forbidden on most Advent calenders (no creche, no angels, etc.), so der Weihnachtsmann and fairy tales dominated.  Religious calendars were only available through churches or Christian book stores and not in the state-owned and -operated ones.  One of the oddest things to me has been the common use of 6-pointed (and sometimes 8-pointed) stars in German Christmas decorations, such as for the windows of Advent calendar.  I realize this may be a function of geometry (two triangles or two squares overlaid), but I somewhere internalized the idea that the Star-of-David is a "Jewish" shape and am more accustomed to using 5-pointed stars.  I didn't notice if 6-pointed stars showed up during the NS time period, but they were definitely used after the war, just a few years of their having been used to single out a people for destruction.

The museum also displayed more recent calendars, including a series drawn by a local artist about the Dresden Neustadt that has been going on for over a decade.  And of course there were fillable calendars, with chocolates, toys, and one that was essentially a 24-pack of beer!  As a kid I remember we had Advent calendars--sometimes they even had chocolates in them, and with three of us wanting to open the windows, that meant an unbearable wait of two whole days until the next piece!  I hadn't had an Advent calendar in many years, but this year I am using one that I purchased here.  It has a totally stereotypical nineteenth-century bourgeois family-in-the-parlor scene, and the windows open to reveal things like gingerbread and mistletoe, and a goose.  I have ambitious plans to try to make my own for next year.

In addition to 110 years' worth of Advent calendars, there are also wooden pyramids, antique toys, and a collection of Nussknacker, the oldest from 1850.  Slate recently published an illustrated history of nutcrackers.  Like many other Christmas handcrafts, they gained in popularity in Germany in the nineteenth century, probably on account of the development of a large middle class with the income to buy and the space at home to display such niceties.  These are also the people who developed the candle-covered Tannenbaum; poorer folk made do with a pyramid, whose candles' heat turned the blades and displayed the carved figures.  Finally, they also showed a collection of turned and painted wooden angels whose designs became instant classics in the 1920s and 1930s.  What is remarkable about them is that they were designed and made by a pair of women, when the woodworking tradition has otherwise largely been a male art and trade.


After the museum I headed down to the Christmas market at the foot of the Frauen Kirche, which happens  to be nineteenth-century themed.  The booths are simple wooden shacks with old-fashioned decorations, and the vendors often wear something approaching period clothing over/with their modern winter gear (hey, it's been really cold here).  In the picture above you can see the Frauen Kirche towering over the live-manger in the middle of the market; when I was there they had some very un-photogenic sheep amid the Holy Family and one really large Wise Man.

Meanwhile, I was hungry and on a mission: to find Glühwein and a waffle (or similar).  I bought my hot drink first and drank it while watching the Plinsen maker flip this crepe variety.  I wanted mine with Nutella and banana, but they were out of banana.  The crepe was delicious, but I'm still not a fan of Glühwein--it's tends to be too strong for my taste.  Ah well.  More for those of you who like it!





*--Here in Germany they still distinguish between Saint Nikolaus, who brings chocolate and fruit to children who clean their boots on the night of December 5, and the Weihnachtsmann (Father Christmas), who brings bigger presents on Christmas Eve.  Sometimes it's the Christ Child who brings the presents on the night of his birth.  And then there's the Russian Grandfather Frost, a similarly jolly fellow who brings gifts on New Year's Eve.  My roommate even constructed an Advent calendar of little numbered paper baskets that hang across her daughter's room (too high to reach by herself!), each with candy or small gifts in them.  Do these children get spoiled this time of year or what?