German Traditions

Christmas Time & Traditions in Germany
During the four weeks before Christmas, Germans celebrate Advent, a romantic and delightful time of the year, which is strongly linked to traditional Christmas markets in wonderful settings You'll find plenty of hand-crafted Christmas decorations, cute little incense burners, wooden-carved toys and nativity scenes to place at the heart of your Christmas display. Germany's first Christmas market was recorded in 1393, and today there are thousands of them all over the country.

Karneval: Mardi Gras' German Cousin
Many of Germany's visitors remember this event. It happens about six weeks before Easter, or one week to 10 days leading up to the beginning of Lent. It starts with Cologne's two-and-half hour Rose Monday parade and includes huge "Karneval" floats bearing dozens of citizens dressed up in costumes. They toss fistfuls of candies to the noisy crowds on the sidewalks, exactly the way New Orlean's Mardi Gras crews toss plastic-beaded necklaces and coins.

Oktoberfest - the world's favorite German fest
Oktoberfest is unmistakably a German tradition. This 16-day festial in Munich attracts over six million visitors per year who consume about 1,320,860 gallons of beer, 400,000 pork sausages and 480,000 roasted chickens. It started 12 October 1810, at the wedding of Bavaria's Crown Prince Ludwig to Princess Therese of Saxony-Hildburghausen. Against tradition, the couple invited Munich's locals. The events were held over five days on the fields that today are named Theresienwiese after the bride.

The Easter Bunny & the Tale of the Eggs
From the name to the bunny, its all German. The name Easter was first appropriated by the Christian calendar. First it was the pagan festival Ostrara, celebrated on the vernal equinox, around 21 March in the Northern hemisphere. Ostrara was named for the pagan goddess of spring, Eostre. According to legend, she once saved a bird whose wings had frozen during the winter by turning it into a rabbit. because the rabbit had once been a bird, it could lay eggs. And so it became the Easter Bunny.