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GHOSTS OF CHRISTMAS PAST

In Leipzig’s holiday markets, tradition – plus a whole lot of sugar – erase the memories of recent history to create a fairy-tale happy ending.

Text: ED WARD

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Leipzig is eastern Germany’s most modern city. But the first thought that might come to you as you disembark at the train station is: "This is Old World." And then you walk down a pedestrian street of layer-cake buildings (once the home of the city’s shmatte district), turn past the warrens of ancient shopping arcades and arrive at the marketplace by the old town hall. Now you feel kind of brilliant. The marketplace is the confirmation. Because there’s nothing more Old World than a German Christmas market.

Even after a decade in Germany, I’m still a sucker for this country’s Christmas markets. North Americans have become so used to the glossy pageant of commerce that passes for Christmas that we’ve mythologized the ideal, like some childhood present. Somehow, the Germans have preserved that postcard perfection.

The Germans do Christmas right. A lot of Christmas carols were written by Germans (including "Silent Night"), and the whole Christmas tree thing hearkens back to pre-Christian German nature mysticism. The Germans love the holiday so much they spread it out. Some say the season starts on November 11, St. Martin’s Day, when kids parade through the streets with lanterns. Others say the season begins with First Advent, the first of the four Sundays before the 25th. On December 6, it’s Nikolaustag, St. Nicholas’ Day, when Weinachtsmann (Christmas Man) and his strange little helper, Knecht Ruprecht, deposit oranges, cookies and candies in good children’s boots. (A potentially sinister figure, Knecht Ruprecht carries the gifts for the good children – and a rod to beat the naughty ones.) This isn’t to say that the locals aren’t immune to the plastic glitz, but there’s a big place in the German heart for tradition: simple wooden toys, homemade sweets, amateur music making...

And sugar. It’s amazing that this entire nation doesn’t slip into a diabetic coma around Christmas. Here at the marketplace are the stollen ladies, with Christstollen and butter stollen and almond stollen and poppy seed stollen. (Think a heavier, sweeter, more edible kind of Christmas cake, and you’ll have some idea about this traditional German Christmas treat.) Nearby, the cookie folks sell stollen but also specialties from nearby Nuremberg: lebkuchen, a kind of gingerbread made with a leaven of honey and flour that ferments for several months; and früchtebrot, a dark bread that’s sort of like the Platonic ideal of fruitcake. A local company offers pastry sticks flavoured with coconut or rum, bars made with almonds, marzipan potatoes (pretty realistic actually, but why would you want to eat a marzipan potato?) and big chocolate "bombs." Another candy company has glazed walnuts, Brazil nuts, grapes, strawberries, apples and pears, as well as chocolate-covered examples of all of the above. And to wash it all down, everyone drinks glühwein, sweet mulled wine.

All of it is enough to remind me of what "holiday cheer" is supposed to mean. But first things first. I ignore most of the temptations and continue on my way toward St. Thomas’ church. This is a regular stop for me – I’m here to meet an old friend. And there, under the simple slab in the choir, he lies: Johann Sebastian Bach. This was his church. He taught at the long since demolished school next door and lived across the street where the Bach-Museum is now. He’s been in the church since 1949, when his bones were moved from the churchyard at St. Joseph’s. (At least, they think it’s him.)

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