Christmas preparations in Germany begin from 1st of December as people
bake spiced cakes, gingerbread houses and cookies, make gifts and start
holiday decorations. On 6th of December, Nikolaustag or St. Claus day is
celebrated and children leave out a shoe or boot outside the door on the
previous evening. Good children receive presents while bad children
receive blows from rod. Traditional Christmas toys consist of little
dolls of fruit. Children write letters to the angel Christkind (a
messenger of the Christ child), a winged figure in white robes and a
golden crown who delivers gifts to German children, and keep them on
their windowsills on Christmas Eve. Sometimes, they decorate letters by
sprinkling sugar on the glue-brushed letters to make them sparkle.
A German Christmas pastry known as Christbaumgeback is used as a
Christmas tree decoration. Santa Claus is replaced by Weihnachtsmann or
Christmas Man in Germany. Sometimes, several Christmas trees are
decorated in one home. Advent wreaths of Holly or Adventskranz with four
red candles in the center are placed on the table and one candle is
lighted each Sunday. The last one is lit on the Christmas Eve. In some
regions, parents lock up a room. Then on the midnight of Christmas eve,
they wake up children and take them to the locked room where the tree is
all lit up and there are gifts kept under it. Catholic German boys and
girls dress up as kings on Three Kings Day and carry a star round the
village singing carols and collecting treats and money as donations.
