The German Christmas tales behind our most iconic festive traditions

A Ukrainian Christmas

Nadiyka Gerbish and Yaroslav Hrytsak

Sphere, £16.99

Review by Susan Flockhart

Of all our Christmas customs, one of the most cherished is complaining about how commercialised the festival has become. And undoubtedly the hype generated by supermarkets, toy companies and perfume manufacturers is ferocious. Yet seasonal consumerism turns out to be rather an ancient tradition. A German Christmas – a collection of tales and poems by Austrian, Swiss and German writers spanning two centuries – includes an extract from ETA Hoffmann’s 1806 work, Nutcracker and the Mouse King. It opens on Christmas Eve, as the children of the wealthy Stahlbaum family delight in the opulent array of decorations, gifts and exotic foods that have been laid on for their delectation.

A festive extract from Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks (1901) tells a similar tale of excess. The “mighty Christmas tree, towering almost to the ceiling” is supplemented by a row of candy-trimmed smaller trees arranged along a gift-laden table. “The larger presents that did not fit on the table had been placed in a long row on the floor.” In Heinrich Heine’s Berlin at Christmastide (1922), shoppers “flit like butterflies” among market stalls loaded with jewellery, toys and sweets, while Arthur Schnitzler’s Christmas Shopping (1893) involves a frenzied session on a glittering Viennese high street an hour before the shops close for the holiday.

And if you thought the January M&S returns queue was anything new, Hermann Hesse’s After Christmas (1928) will put you right, as his apparently rather spoiled protagonist spends a pleasant day exchanging presents that hadn’t hit his sweet spot. “It’s astonishing that after the Christmas rush the saleswomen in nice shops manage to spare so much good cheer for the days of gift returns,” he muses.

Still more astonishing – to this reader, at least – is the revelation that such affluence existed during those lean periods of European history, and the book’s most affecting stories recall far simpler Christmases in more modest households.

Author Peter Rosegger was raised in poverty in the Austrian mountains and his 1877 tale, Christmas Eve, describes a child’s walk to mass through the winter darkness accompanied by natural torchlight and a distant tinkling. “So it was true, what Grandmother had said: at midnight the bells begin to ring, and they ring until the very last dweller in the farthest valleys had come to church.”

The atmosphere in the candlelit chapel is wonderfully described but on the child’s homeward journey, he trembles at every crossroads, “where on Christmas Eve the Evil One loves to stand”, and longs to encounter a deer “because everyone knows that on Christmas Eve the beasts can talk like men”. Lost in the freezing forest, his salvation comes from an unexpected quarter, in a poignant confirmation of the season’s most abiding themes: redemption, the comfort of strangers and the kindness that emanates from the humblest of hearts.

Such stories provide enchanting glimpses of midwinter traditions and beliefs that have murmured down the centuries. Magic and miracles abound in the Grimm brothers’ The Elves and the Shoemaker (1806) but it’s human intervention that delivers Martin’s Christmas Wish (Erich Kastner, 1933), giving the gift of togetherness to a family that would otherwise have faced the holiday apart.

Another gem is Wolfdietrich Schnurre’s The Loan (1958), which describes a penniless father’s ingenious endeavours to secure a Christmas tree for his family.

Along with the Christmas market, the household Tannenbaum (fir tree) is one of many conventions we owe to our German neighbours. Traditionally, Ukrainians brought a festive wheat sheaf or “didukh” into their homes, and the ubiquitisation of Germany’s seasonal emblem is explored in A Ukrainian Christmas.

Originally published in Ukraine in 2020 as The Great Christmas Book, this fascinating global history of the festival is now available in an updated English translation. In it, the authors depict their home nation’s rich Christmas folklore within the context of the Russia-Ukraine war and the book is dedicated to Artem Dymyd – a young man who died defending his country – and to other Ukrainians “murdered by the modern-day Herod”.

Among the customs described in this beautifully illustrated guide is the Ukrainian Christmas Eve dinner or Holy Supper during which, we learn, “there will be one plate more than there are people in the house.

“The ritual is observed as a memory of deceased relatives, but it also serves as an invitation to any lonely strangers who might pass the house in need of shelter and community”.

As casualties mount and Ukrainians seek refuge beyond their battered homeland, the pathos evoked by that passage is almost unbearable. Yet the authors’ message is one of hope.

“For as long as we celebrate Christmas, we can neither be defeated nor destroyed,” they write. Their festival has, after all, survived attempts by the Soviet Union to abolish it, though nowadays, it’s Vladimir Putin who is often cast as Herod in Ukrainian performances of the once-banned nativity play.

There is a fascinating chapter unpicking the histories of two legendary characters. St Nicholas (known as Sinterklaas in the Netherlands) was the traditional Eastern European gift-giver but the mystical figure of Did Moroz (Grandfather Frost), was appropriated by the Soviets as the secular bringer of New Year presents. Today, in countries that have turned away from communism, “Did Moroz has been driven out by St Nicholas. And so we are witnessing a cultural war between these two icons,” say the authors.

The book ends with a chapter on seasonal truces. When the German Kaiser dispatched 100,000 Christmas trees to the Western Front in order to raise his troops’ spirits, it had “the opposite effect”, reminding soldiers of the home fires they were missing. In the crisp winter air of December 24, 1914, their carol-singing carried the short distance to enemy trenches.

What happened next has become one of our most treasured Christmas fables. It should remind us that young Russian soldiers and their families are also victims of this terrible war.

A German Christmas is a follow-up to A Scandinavian Christmas (published last year) and precedes a set of tales from Italy coming in late 2023. Though it would have benefited from an introduction to contextualise the stories, the book is a valuable collection which, like A Ukrainian Christmas, reminds us that, despite the commercialism that abounds at this time of year, the most enduring midwinter messages have nothing to do with shopping.

Surviving since pagan times, evolving with Christianity and adapting to local cultures, they whisper to us across the ages about hope, kindness, light in the darkness and a heartfelt desire for peace.