Christmas is a season brimming with tradition. And oh, what fun it is to make a new tradition every now and then — or to adopt one from someone, or somewhere, else.
For the past several years, Atlanta has hosted a traditional, German-style Christmas market. The Atlanta Christkindl Market, as it’s called, even expanded to a second location this year: There’s one in Buckhead and now a new one near the Cobb Galleria.
It’s a particularly welcome development in my household, because it’s reminiscent of our time living in Europe.
When my wife and I were newlyweds, my job with The Wall Street Journal took us to Brussels, Belgium. We lived there for four and a half years, starting one November.
Our first trip outside Brussels was on a group tour to nearby Monschau, Germany, for its Christmas market. We were immediately hooked by both the town, which seems like something out of a fairy tale, and its quintessential Christmas market.
Despite the name, a German Christmas market is not necessarily a place to do one’s Christmas shopping. There are vendors selling goods, of course, but they often tend toward souvenirs and kitsch (a good German word).
For us, like many, the main attraction was the food and drink, with their wonderful smells and tastes.
Various sausages, savory potato cakes with applesauce, pretzels with mustard, stroopwafels and Belgian waffles and chocolates galore — all beckoned as we approached the town center. You might consider a Christmas market as the original food-truck park.
There is usually a biergarten and, given the weather, a host of warmer drinks on offer: ciders and hot cocoa and the spiced, mulled wine known as Gluhwein.
Round these delights gather crowds of merrymakers. And not only in Germany, of course. There was a market each year in Brussels and in other Belgian cities. One of the most famous Christmas markets, and one of our favorites, is in Strasbourg, France — although that city, and the Alsatian region surrounding it, have passed back and forth between Huns and Franks many times over the years, so maybe it still counts as German. Not quite the same, but similar in ways, is the English tradition of wassailing, about which you surely have sung, among the leaves so green.
The point of it all is not gluttony, but the kind of community and merriment — Christmas cheer — that too often gets lost in the frenzy of our holiday season.
The speed at which we live our modern lives does not slow down for Christmas, even as the season’s traditions — to say nothing of the sacred reason for celebrating it — practically demand it.
‘Tis better to give than to receive, no doubt. But the quest to fill the space beneath the tree with gifts has, I confess, become my overriding concern during more than one Yule. I’m certain I’m not alone in straying both from the season’s spiritual underpinnings and its cultural traditions.
All the more so, when we no longer have to venture out to busy sidewalks dressed in holiday style and rush home with our treasures. A bit of web surfing and a few click, click, clicks, and soon the only thing stirring will be Amazon’s fleet of trucks.
To carve out an afternoon or evening simply for festive frivolity can feel like an undeserved luxury. But here is where learning from our forebears, in the traditions they left us, can be helpful.
One need not visit a Christmas market; unlike Monschau, not every town of 12,000 hosts one in our country. Maybe it’s going around with family looking at elaborately lighted houses. Maybe it’s going house to house with friends offering Christmas carols — or visiting a nursing home or shut-ins to spread Christmas cheer to them. Break out the wassail if you’re so inclined. (But mind the local open container laws!)
There’s no one best way to spread Christmas cheer, whatever Buddy the Elf says. But spreading it is the best way to have it.