You never have seen her, Santa,
For she only came this year;
But she’s just the blessedest baby!
And now before you go,
Just cram her stocking with goodies,
From the top clean down to the toe.”
A German Christmas
In Germany a little girl begins to think about Christmas almost as soon as she gets back from a summer holiday, for it is still very much the custom there to make something yourself for those you love best, and German girls learn while they are still little to embroider beautifully all kinds of articles for household use,—a monogram on a fine handkerchief, or spray of flowers on a bit of linen to wear at the neck. An older girl makes such things as a canvas traveller’s-case, or a set of shoe-bags, embroiders a sofa-cushion or knits a silk necktie. Mothers and aunts are more likely to make soberly useful gifts of stockings, underclothing, dresses; nothing is thought out-of-place. But every one must give to every one else. That is law. And every one aims to keep as a secret what she is making; it must be hidden at least from the one for whom it is intended, so there is quite an air of “I know something nice, but I cannot tell it,” about a German household through all the weeks before the holiday.
About a fortnight before Christmas the fair begins which Mrs. Sidgwick tells us is to be seen “in any one of the old German cities in the hill country, when the streets and the open places are covered with crisp clean snow, and the mountains are white with it, and the moon shines on the ancient houses, and the tinkle of sledge bells reaches you when you escape from the din of the market, and look down at the bustle of it from some silent place, a high window, perhaps, or the high empty steps leading into the cathedral. The air is cold and still, and heavy with the scent of the Christmas trees brought from the forest for the pleasure of the children. Day by day you see the rows of them growing thinner, and if you go to the market on Christmas Eve itself you will find only a few trees left out in the cold. The market is empty, the peasants are harnessing their horses or their oxen, the women are packing up their unsold goods. In every home in the city one of the trees that scented the open air about a week ago is shining now with lights and little gilded nuts and apples, and is helping to make that Christmas smell, all compact of the pine forest, wax candles, cakes, and painted toys, you must associate so long as you live with Christmas in Germany.”
We have Christmas trees in plenty, but to the German mind we have them all wrong. In the first place, their trees are small, and every one, from the Emperor down to the poorest laborer, has a tree. But he has it at home, on Christmas Eve if he can, less often on Christmas Day, and only sometimes on the day after, which they call the Second Christmas Day. A German family never invites a party to its Christmas tree, only relatives or intimate friends. As a rule, there is one tree, fixed on a small stand in the centre of a large square table covered with a snow-white cloth, and around the tree the presents are arranged, those for each person in a separate pile. The tree is lighted for beauty, and is decorated with ornaments of glass and tinsel, sweetmeats, apples, gilded nuts, and a few very small toys. Some of the sweetmeats made for German trees are very elaborate. There are Kringeln, transparent sugar candies twisted in figure eights or circles, so that they easily hang on. There are sugar candy animals of every shape and color; and here and there a fascinating scene in colored sugar on a white background, a sportsman in a red coat, perhaps, pointing his gun at an enormous rabbit that sits up almost touching the end of the gun-barrel. The celebrated Lübecker Marzipan (a kind of almond paste which you have tasted, maybe, on bride-cake) imitates all kinds of fruit and vegetables so well that they can easily be mistaken for real.