Yes, Hobbits have first and second breakfast, but Germans have first and second Christmas (25th and 26th of December). There are many reasons this is a nice place to live. Here is a first-timer’s account of a German Christmas celebration. If you click on any of the pictures, it will take you to our picture website, where you can see more. Enjoy!

First of all, Germans do their big family celebration with dinner and gifts on Christmas Eve. Flo says that’s so they have the whole next day to play with their new toys. I would like to mention, however, that my mother-in-law told me she would do it like my family, so the kids don’t have to try to sleep almost immediately after receiving their new toys. At any rate, my family always had super-extended-everyone-invited dinner on Christmas Eve and did presents in the morning, with just close family. My landlady says that’s the Italian way to do it. I don’t know, but it really dismayed Flo at first. We finally came to a compromise, which worked out very well.

We went to Sebastian and Lea’s new house for Christmas Eve. That’s Flo’s older brother. Our whole family was there and so was Lea’s. I’d never met them before and they were really nice. Her mom was really funny. I bet she could really get going with my Pop – telling jokes and stuff.

(Erich, Lea’s Mom, Dad, sister, Benni, Lea’s brother)
We had some cake and then we went to church. The whole church thing was a shock to me. Flo tried to tell me we would have to go, but I misunderstood him and didn’t expect to go. It’s Lutheran church, which Flo swears is not at all like Catholic, but since I don’t know, it seemed a lot like Catholic to me. Singing out of a book, standing and sitting at sudden moments, answering the preacher guy back some words that everyone mysteriously knows already… it really wasn’t my cup of tea. Not sure about that tradition, but we can think about that again next year. Then we went back and unwrapped presents. Flo and I were very proud of ourselves, because it seems we found gifts that made everyone happy. We like making people happy. We received a whole bunch of cool stuff from everyone. We got a big ole’ 3-in-1 kitchen machine (stand mixer, food processor and blender) and a CD and a thing that I only know the name in German, but you put liquid in it if you want to keep it hot or cold and it should also look acceptable on the table, to pour from, and Flo finally got his coffee machine, with plenty of coffee to last a while. He’s been drinking coffee nearly non-stop since the 24th.  After presents, we ate dinner, which was raclette. I’ve never seen that in America.

Basically this machine in the middle of the table is a grill and you put whatever the heck you want in there to get all warm. The important part is the cheese. The cheese really makes the raclette, in my opinion. A few of us sat around after the others had left and just chit chatted, which I really enjoyed. Then it was home again, home again, jiggedy jog.

The compromise Flo and I reached was that we’d do presents with his family on Christmas Eve, but open ours to each other on Christmas morning. So we got our behinds out of the bed relatively early on Monday. We both wished for a white Christmas, but evidently the best Mother Nature could come up with was ethereal frost.

Better than nothing. I made batter for apple fritters and we cleaned a few things up (like our stinky selves), then we set to the presents! We both felt a bit like, hm, are the presents going to be good enough for the other one? (Again, we wanted to make each other happy…) We didn’t have to worry! We did a good job! Here’s our tree, before we started:

We even did stockings (not a German tradition) and it was lovely! We each got each other some kitchen stuff and some useful stuff and some stuff off our wishlist. We bought each other UNO, so I guess we’ll have to bring one back. I got Flo games and a bench for his keyboard and a knife sharpener (for our super kitchen knives) and some shirts and a calendar of donkeys (it was too cute!) and I don’t know what else.

He bought me the Indiana Jones DVD trilogy and a new coat and a thing to scrape the burners on our stove (I’m forever burning stuff onto them) and some Christmas ornaments and earrings and some other stuff. He even put ribbons on them all, when he never bothered with them before!

This one is particularly cool…

After that, we finished cooking our apple fritters and ate them while we watched one of Flo’s (new) James Bond DVDs.

Then we sat around for a while, had a video conference with my family in America, so we could sort of spend Christmas together and played Siedler, which, surprisingly enough, I can beat Flo at!

Second Christmas day, we slept in, went to lunch with some of the family and had a few of them back to our place. We used Flo’s coffee machine and watched 7 Zwerge, Der Wald ist nicht genug (translated, The Seven Dwarves, The woods are not enough). It’s a comedy telling of Snow White where all the dwarves are played by known German comedians. It was funny, but most of you will never see it, since you only speak english.