Many Jacobs students had to spend Christmas on campus this year, they had a Christmas dinner and exchanged Secret Santa presents with one another, but what are the German traditions surrounding Christmas? One of them is Advent, a popular religious celebration for Christmas. It can be witnessed in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. It starts four weeks before Christmas Eve, at which time an Advent wreath (Adventskrantz) is set on the first Advent Sunday (the fourth before Christmas). The wreath consists of four candles, each representing one week. The candles also represent hope, love, joy, and peace. Traditionally families gather every Sunday, when they sing and light the candle for the upcoming week together.
Nowadays, Advent calendars are more popular around the world compared to the religious celebration of Advent. Interestingly, the first Advent calendars were made out of paper. The 24 windows (one for each day before Christmas Eve) contained religious Christmas symbols, with the biggest window reserved for the 24th of December, showing the Nativity scene. Nowadays, the Christmas celebrations around the world are mostly represented via Advent calendars filled with sweet surprises or small presents; some of them still contain the typical Christmas symbols as chocolate shaped in different forms.
BY Kremena Terzieva (Bulgaria) | CLASS OF 2021
