Strange German Holidays #11 - Advent

Only three more posts to go after this one!

Advent isn't a holiday per se - rather, it indicates the time before christmas. The term stems from the latin 'adventus', which means arrival, and, of course, refers to the birth of Jesus on christmas itself.

In general, Advent is when you start decorating your house, baking christmas cookies and eating all the yummy sweets that go with it - like dominoes, gingerbread, christmas-flavoured chocolate, and so on (although they start selling these about mid-october nowadays...). The christmas tree itself is traditionally not set up until christmas eve, but some people put their nativity up early (Felix' grandma for example - hers is really stunning and impressive and takes up several tables, I'll try to take a picture for you guys later).

Now, there are two distinct ways to count down the time to christmas, and for each there is a tradition to go with it. You probably all now of the first one: The Adventskalender (advent calendar), counting the days from December 1st to the 24th. Those are really popular in German, you can get some with pictures or poems, books with 24 little stories (or one story with 24 chapters - I still have ma favourite from when I was a kid, it was the story of the clumsy little angel Plotsch, who came into heaven [one German Christmas tradition is that the angels in heaven make all the gifts for Christmas], trying to help but making a mess everywhere he went, until he finally found something he was good at), and of course all kinds with sweets and chocolates - almost every sweets manufacturer also produces an advent calender. And then there are some with toys, like Playmobil or Lego, and for adults they have advent calendars with tea, cosmetics, juwelry or even with 24 differnt brands of beer. Of course there are also some with 24 boxes or little sacks you can fill yourself, my grandma always used to do that for me when I was a child. I still love them, and we have actually four this year: One with pictures and poems my grandma got me, one with M&Ms I got from Felix, I made and filled one for him and we also have one from Ikea (with chocolate and two gift cards) that we share.

The other way of counting is counting the sundays before christmas - you start four sundays before christmas eve and call it the First Advent - depending on what day of the week christmas falls on, this can already be in November. So today is actually the Third Advent, next sunday will be the Fourth. There are special services at church these four Advent Sundays, and at home, many people will have an Adventskranz (Advent Wreath). It's traditionally a wreath,but can take a number of different shapes: We used to decorate a flat bowl with moss and fir branches and stuff like that, and the one we bought this year is actually in a cake tin. What they all have in common, though, is four candles, and each sunday, you lit one more. You can light them on the other days of the week as well as you want, but you only add more on the sundays, so that all four are lit on the Fourth Advent. There are many songs and poems that go with this tradition, but this one is probably best known:

Advent, Advent, 

ein Lichtlein brennt

Erst eins, dann zwei, dann drei, dann vier

Dann steht Weihnachten vor der Tür!

Advent, Advent

A light is lit

First one, then two, then three, then four

Then christmas's knocking at the door!

And kids like to add:

Und wenn das fünfte Lichtlein brennt

Dann hast du Weihnachten verpennt.

Which means: If you light a fifth light, you have missed Christmas...boo!

Part of our setup, with two of our Advent calendars
and the Advent-caketin

Advent Calendar Blog Hop 2015

This blog hop is once again hosted by the wonderful Jo from Serendipitous Stitching, and it's my turn today! So make yourself comfortable, grap some hot cocoa with Peter Polar Bear here

and listen to me telling you how christmas eve is celebrated in my family. [short note: Christmas Eve or 'Heiligabend' is when actual christmas is happening in Germany - tree, presents, and all]

Since Felix and I only moved in together last year, traditions are only starting to from now, but I'll just tell you what we are planning to do this year. So, thankfully, we have Christmas Eve off from work, so we get to sleep in. Then, there will probably be some last minute present preparation (mostly wrapping, maybe some framing when stitchy presents are involved). We're having a quiet morning and a small lunch, then we head over to my grandparents in the afternoon.
I like to go to church on Christmas Eve - our church does a family service at 5pm, there is lots of singing, a nativity play by the kindergardeners, and candles lit with a light that came all the way from Bethlehem. When everyone is singing 'Oh how joyfully' in the end and the bells start ringing after that, then going out with the candle and walking home (preferably through the snow, although it's bin a while since we had a white Christmas), that's when Christmas really starts for me.
When we get home we have dinner - we traditionally used to have ham and potato salad for dinner, but in recent years we tried a few new things as well - then we put on some nice-but-comfy clothes and head for the living room with the tree and presents. We unwrap them, are happy (hopefully ;)) and spend all evening, talking and eating cookies and other christmas sweets, listening to our old christmas CDs (some of them we already had when I was a kid), sometimes watching a movie if someone got a good new one, maybe trying out or playing with what ever else we got, just spending some nice quality time together. It's a very nice way to get out of the stress and into the quiet time of between-the-years (in Germany, we have to holidays right after christmas, and Felix and I are off from work until the new year, so we really have some time to relax afterwards). I'm really looking forward to it now that I'm talking about it :)

I'll probably do one of my 'Strange German Holiday' posts around Christmas too, if you are interested in a few more traditions we used to have, or stuff from before and after Christmas Eve as well, so please come back later if you'd like to know more :)

The Alphabet Club: Letter D

This is an other format I didn't want to drop out of, busy or not, since I really like the idea - you kinda lost me at C, but there really aren't terribly many words starting with C in the German language. In fact, all I could think of are some words starting with 'ch', and those are mostly the same as in English, like China or Chemie (chemistry) or Chor (choir). Not very interesting. D is different though, I'm sure I can think of something interesting with D!

But first, for stitching with 'D' - here is Davy Jones:

Today's D-Word is going to be 'Dorf' - Village. There are quite a few Dörfer in Germany, especially in the mountain regions, like the Schwarzwald or the Spessart. Now the interesting part is (and I don't know how other countries handle this), in Germany, there is no set size when a village automatically becomes a town - 'town' or German 'Stadt' is a title that gets granted to a settlement, although I'm not sure about the exact conditions. So in theory, there could be a Dorf with a million people, or a Stadt with only 100.

Yes, that's kind of a short fun fact for today...I'm sure there are many more things one could say about villages and living in them, but I never have lived there so I don't have first hand knowledge. And everytime I start talking about it, Felix (who was born and raised in a village) throws my evil glances, so I think my idea of Dorfleben is probably not to realistic, so let's keep it at that ;)

Strange German Holidays #10 - The Mourning Days

My usual blog posts are still on hold while I'm in full hermit mode - working as fast as I can on some christmas projects I can't share yet, and not much in the mood for people or blogging. But I really like this holiday project, so I need to bring at least that to a good end - would be a shame giving up so close to the end of the year!

So, the mourning days...that's not an official term, but something I just invented to talk about three somewhat similiar holidays in November.

First, there is All-Saints-Day (Allerheiligen). It's a Catholic high-holiday held on November 1st to honour all of the saints, and it's an actual holiday in some parts of Germany (as in, a day off). I don't know much about the celebrations since I'm not catholic, and it doesn't have much to do with mourning either - but Felix, who grew up in a catholic house, has told me that they always went to the graveyard, thinking about the deads, and a priest would bless the graves. I was a bit confused about that story, but then I looked it up on wikipedia and found that those rites actually belong to All-Souls-Day (Allerseelen), which is the day after All-Saints-Day, but since that is not holiday and people can't stroll around the graveyard in the afternoon, they are often practised the day before. All-Souls-Day is a day to thik about our dead loved ones, and traditionally you are supposed to pray for them to shorten their time in the purgatory - that pre-hell place were souls are put when they are potentially okay to go to heaven, but have some sins to repent first. Things about catholics I don't really get...

Next, there is the Totensonntag or Ewigkeitssonntag (Sunday of the Dead/Sunday of Eternity), which is the protestant equialent to All-Souls-Day. It's the last sunday of the churchyear (see Advent, the next post in the holiday series). We don't bless graves, though, we just think about our dead in the church service, and visit graves in our own time. On both holidas, flowers and candles are often placed on the graves.

The last of the three is held a week before Totensonntag, and its the Volkstrauertag (People's Moruning Day) - it's kind of the German version of Memorial Day, to think about 'people that died in armed conflict or under opression'. There's not much of a celebration, naturally, and since we lack the patriotism that other countries have (see German Unity Day) noone makes a big deal out of it - there are speeches in TV and it's one of the 'silent days', where public celebration is forbidden, and that's about it.

So, these are the three pretty dark holidays of November - not much to say about them, but I still wanted to mention them for a somewhat complete picture. See you soon with a post about a much happier subject - Advent, the time before christmas!

Strange German Holidays #9 - Martinstag

So I now I am waaaaay behind - not just with updating you on my progress, but also with commenting on all of your awesome posts, and some more things on top of that - but I do have reasons. Okay, reason number one is me being lazy, as usual, but there are other reasons too, I swear - good busy reasons, so don't you worry, but reasons still! Nevertheless, I need to at least make time to tell you about one of my favourite holidays (and hopefully about some other November holidays as well before the huge holiday period of pre-christmas starts). So, this favourite of mine is Martinstag, St. Martin's Day in English, or just St. Martin for short.

St. Martin lived in the fourth century AD in Hungary. He was born in 316 or 317 and was later to become the bishop of Tours, but in his youth, following his father's wishes, he became a soldier of the Roman Empire. St. Martin's Day is celebrated on the 11th of November, which is the day he was buried after he died in 397 (coincidently, this is also the day Fasnacht starts - see here).

Now as the story is told, one day in winter, Martin (or Martinus by his Roman name) came across a poor, half naked man, freezing to death in the cold. Now Martinus was a soldier, sitting high up on his horse - it would have been easy to overlook the poor guy, but he didn't. He wanted to help, but he didn't have anything on him but his weapons and his military uniform. So he took his sword, and cut his warm, bright red coat (which historically was probably white, but red sounds nice in the story) in half, offering one half to the guy on the ground.

Now in his honour, there are parades everywhere where children will march through the dark holding lanterns (often hand crafted - we used to make them all together in kindergarden, later my mum helped me, and the last one I personally made a few years ago can be seen here) and singing special songs about St Martin, his deeds, and lanterns. They also act out the scene with the beggar or, if they're lucky, there's an actual horseman to do that. At the end of the parade, children will get pretzels or special rolls (Martinsweck). I don't know if they do that everywhere, but when I was in kindergarden and elementary school, we would only get one pretzel for two kids, so we had to share it, just like Martin shared his coat. Here's a video I found on Youtube that gives quite a nice impression of a St Martin's parade:

Another custom that is quite common, but we personally never did this, is to have goose for dinner on St Martin's day. There are several stories behind this, but the one I heard as a child goes as follows:
When Martin had left the army, he started living as a kind of hermit, but he soon gained quite some followers for his good deeds. Eventually, the people of Tours wanted to make him their bishop, but, being humble as he was, Martin refused. The people insisted, and he fled, hiding in a geese-coop. But the geese, being, well, geese, quacked and chattered loudly, people found him, and he became the bishop anyways. So today, we eat them - you know, to thank them. Or maybe to punish them for giving poor Martin away.

Now there are many more traditons surounding this holiday (which isn't actually a day off by the way, you only get to celebrate in the evening) - for example, in some regions the kids go from door to door with their lanterns, like on Halloween - but these are the ones I have personally experienced and grew up with. It  was one of my favourites as a kid, because crafting the lanterns was always so much fun, there's a horse, and the songs are really beautiful - and today, I still like the lanterns, still like horses and still love the songs, but over everthing else I love this thought of sharing and caring. Some people are now trying dispose of Martin's Day because, being a Christian celebration and all, it's deemed inapropriate to celebrate in public school where children of other faith's are exposed to it, but I really hope they keep the tradition alive in one way or another :)

November TUSAL

Things continue to get more quiet, which I like, and I continue to become more lazy, which I don't like so much - but maybe I just really need the rest. The weather (we had a few sunny days last week, but as a whole it's just getting darker and colder) and some health issues (that will hopefully be resolved soon) are doing their part as well...but the bright side is, this lazyness is keeping me at home as much as possible, which makes for nice stitching progress.

I think it's also time for November TUSAL, so let me start by sharing my ORT jar for the month:

For stitching, I was mostly focusing on My Day Off, and I stitched all of the blue sky...a tad boring, but also very relaxing. Now I'm done with the cross stitch and focusing on the back stitch this week.

I also knitted a bit...I'm almost through the first ball of yarn on the baby jacket, but I need to hurry up now since the baby has been born last week :)

I also did some origame this weekend...a coworker of ours is getting his PhD this friday, and I made some cranes for the games and decoration...they are quite tiny, each about an inch long, and here they are all chilling on my laptop:

So much for my creative progress...now for watching, there was a lot more of Supernatural (S8, E2-16), and what we missed in dramatic feeling that last few episodes is one hundred percent back now :) We also watched S2 E5 of Elementary and some Case Closed/Detectiv Conan (E125-139) and a movie Felix was very eager to see: Wiplash. It's about a jazz drummer and has some really impressive musical parts and since Felix is a drummer himself he loved it, but it really was quite nice :)

And for reading, there was Volume 9 of Case Closed, and I read Stardust. It was my first Neil Gaiman and after my girls all love his books, it was about time - I understand them now! I loved the movie, saw it before I even knew there was a book, and this is one of the rare cases were both are great - they changed, added and removed a few parts in the movie, but both versions are great. I'm sure I'll read something by him again soon :)

October WIPocalypse

While I'm still pretty busy, things seem to be calming down a bit. Work is still trying to be a pain in the behind, but I'm confident it will work out - either I can work around the issues on the current project, or admit defeat and start clean with a new one eventually. And our social-business has been reduced from travelling all over the country to visiting friends around town and doing stuff around the apartment, so basically, preparing for a good, long hibernation. Either way, I had some time to craft this week, and as I was fully focused on two pieces, I made some decent progress as well. But before we get to showing pretty pictures, let me first anwser this month's question for WIPocalypse: Are there any fibers or materials used in stitching that you’re nervous to try?  To be honest, I am nervous every time I try something new - it's not about certain materials specifically, it's a more general thing. I was extremly nervous trying silks for the first time as they are so expensive, but then it was much easier than I thought, so probably all the other stuff will as well :)

Now to my progress: I was working on My Day Off, and had a lot of fun with the vines, the last big confetti-region of the design. I wasn't to thrilled when I first looked at it, but then I just did one colour after the other and it went really smoothly. The tub-lady also has the rest of her legs and a lovely little cat now, so unless I forgot a few stitches in the vines-area (which is very well possible), I only have one colour and the sky left to stitch now (and some back stitching, of course).

The other thing I worked on was that baby jacket I mentioned last week, which caused so much confusion - it's for a friend of mine, not for myself, and it's about halfway finished now:

So, what else happened...lots of watching to warrant all that crafting, of course! We finished S7 of Supernatural (E19-23) and just started E8 today. I liked the S7, but somehow the end felt...less dramatic than it should have for everthing that happened, and now S8 starts with the same feeling for me...I hope I can shake it up after a few episodes. We also started S2 of Elementary yesterday (E1-4) - of course this feels rather slow now after that high-speed finale, but that was to be expected and I still like it. Last but not least, some more Case Closed (E116 - 125), of which I also read to more volumes (7 & 8).

I also finaly got around to playing The Vanishing of Ethan Carter last weekend, a short, but very sweet mystery-game with some interesting puzzles and unexpected story twists. Short, but very enjoyable and interesting :)