Christmas “traditions” in Germany – a critical blog on Christmas in Germany
Every year the same procedure: walking through the streets on December 24th you can see hundreds – sometimes even thousands — of people – 85 % of them are male — erring from shop to shop in order to find only one simple gift for their husband or housewife. That isn´t fun! Rather it is a sad reality in Germany. For many people Christmas is the time of getting and giving presents!
Do you ever heart the term “Fett-Weg-Turnier”? This is the name for special competitions occurring some days after Christmas usually in sports. “Fett-weg” means that the aim of that competitions is only to get leisure people out of their Christmas-armchairs and to able them to burn fat situated on their bodies. You may ask the question: “Why do you need that? Isn´t there enough time between New Year´s Eve and Christmas to do sports?”. The answer is, yes it is. But Germans are a little bit – let me say – “special”. Every year on Christmas they think that they are the fattest human beings on earth. So they decide to do more sports. But why directly after Christmas? On of the typical Germany “traditions” is to use this three special days to eat until the food emanates out of the ears. It is horrible. One time, I think four or five years ago, we visited my grandparents for lunch. That lunch was the biggest I´ve ever eaten before! For real it was really delicious and after eating these mountains of foodstuff a felt very happy and — of course replete. But then two hours later my grandparents jumped up and served us –no fun – 7 different kinds of cake and a lot of chocolate. They called it tea time – I called it the hell on earth. I could even hear my stomach scream: “Not more food!”. After that – everybody around the table ate only one piece of one cake – there was a pause of exactly 2 hours. After that my grandparents jumped up again and served us again a buffet consisting of a lot of different kinds of beef, some bred, cheese and of course salads. That was definitely too much for my! I don´t remember that I have eaten anything on the day after that “experience”.
To put it into a nutshell: There are some very stupid “traditions” in Germany. Everybody should think about it soon!