Christmas in Germany

How Germany celebrates Christmas

Christmas in Germany is a long season rather than a single day. It begins on the first Sunday of Advent, builds through weeks of Christmas markets, baking and carol services, and reaches its climax on the evening of 24 December. The Christmas tree is a German tradition that spread around the world in the 19th century, and German carols such as "O Tannenbaum" and "O du fröhliche" are still sung everywhere. Germany is a country of strong regional identities, so the gift-bringer, the Christmas Eve menu and the local customs change from north to south.

Advent: wreaths, calendars and candles

The four Sundays before Christmas are marked by the Adventskranz, a fir wreath with four candles, one more lit each Sunday. It is credited to Johann Hinrich Wichern, a Protestant theologian in Hamburg, who in 1839 hung a cartwheel in the Rauhes Haus home he ran, with a large candle for each Sunday and small ones for the days in between. The Adventskalender is German too: the first printed Advent calendar, around 1903, was created by the Munich publisher Gerhard Lang, inspired by his mother's habit of sewing 24 small biscuits onto a piece of card.

Homes and windows are decorated with Advent stars, candle arches and nativity scenes, and on 4 December, St Barbara's Day, many people cut cherry branches (Barbarazweige) and put them in water, hoping they will blossom by Christmas. Hand-blown glass baubles have been made in Lauscha, in Thuringia, since 1847.

German Christmas markets

The Weihnachtsmarkt or Christkindlmarkt is Germany's best-known Christmas export. From late November, town squares fill with wooden stalls selling ornaments, toys, candles, nativity figures, Lebkuchen, roasted almonds, Bratwurst and Glühwein, served in a souvenir mug. Almost every town has one, and the big city markets draw millions of visitors.

Dresden's Striezelmarkt, first documented in 1434, is Germany's oldest documented Christmas market, named after the Striezel, an old word for Stollen. On the Saturday before the second Sunday of Advent, the Stollenfest parades a giant Stollen weighing several tonnes through the city. In Nuremberg, the Christkindlesmarkt opens with the Nuremberg Christkind, a young woman aged 16 to 19 chosen every two years, reciting a prologue from the balcony of the Frauenkirche. In 2026 she opens it on Friday, 27 November at 5:30pm.

Nikolaustag: 6 December

On the evening of 5 December, boots are cleaned and set outside the front door. Overnight, Nikolaus, St Nicholas, fills them with nuts, mandarins, chocolate and gingerbread. In some families and towns he visits in person, in a bishop's robe and mitre, with his golden book of good and bad deeds and a stern companion, Knecht Ruprecht. In the Alpine south of Bavaria, the horned, fur-clad Krampus roams the streets with bells and switches. Chocolate Nikolaus figures fill the shops through November and December.

Heiligabend: Christmas Eve

Heiligabend is the high point of the German Christmas. It is not a public holiday, but shops close in the early afternoon and the country goes quiet. The tree, often brought into the house only now, is decorated and lit, and many families go to a Christmas Eve service, frequently with a nativity play (Krippenspiel). Churches are fuller on this evening than at any other time of the year.

Then comes the Bescherung, the giving of presents. A small bell is rung to announce that the presents have arrived, the family gathers by the tree, often singing a carol first, and the presents are opened. Dinner on Christmas Eve is often deliberately simple, with potato salad and sausages a famous favourite, or carp in many southern and eastern families. The two public holidays that follow, the First and Second Christmas Days, are for church, visiting relatives and the Christmas roast, traditionally a goose with red cabbage and potato dumplings.

Christkind or Weihnachtsmann?

Who brings the presents depends on where you live. In the south and west, and in Saxony and southern Thuringia, it is the Christkind, a golden-haired angelic figure in white representing the infant Christ, who is never seen. In most of northern and eastern Germany it is the Weihnachtsmann, a bearded Father Christmas in a red coat. The Christkind has its roots in the Reformation: Martin Luther, who rejected the veneration of saints, gave presents in his family in the name of the "Holy Christ" from 1531 instead of on St Nicholas's Day, and the Christkind spread through Protestant regions before later becoming most popular in the Catholic south.

Both answer their mail. Deutsche Post runs seven Christmas post offices, in places such as Himmelpfort ("heaven's gate") in Brandenburg and Engelskirchen ("angel churches") in North Rhine-Westphalia, which together answered about 564,500 letters to the Weihnachtsmann, the Christkind and Nikolaus in 2025.

Regional Christmas traditions

Saxony and the Erzgebirge

The Erzgebirge (Ore Mountains) on the Czech border is Germany's Christmas craft heartland. Its former mining villages, especially Seiffen, make the carved wooden nutcrackers, smoking men (Räuchermännchen), candle-driven Christmas pyramids and Schwibbögen, arched candle holders that recall the miners' longing for light, which now glow in windows across Germany.

Bavaria and the south

Bavaria keeps the most traditional Christmas: the Christkind, carp on Christmas Eve, nativity scenes, Krampus runs in the Alps and Epiphany as a public holiday. Munich's Christkindlmarkt on Marienplatz and the markets of Nuremberg and Rothenburg are among Germany's most visited.

The north and Berlin

In the Protestant north and in Berlin and the east, the Weihnachtsmann brings presents, potato salad and sausages are the Christmas Eve classic, and the Christmas markets are larger and more urban, from Hamburg's town hall square to the many markets of Berlin.

Across the country, the twelve Rauhnächte between Christmas and Epiphany are surrounded by old folk beliefs, and many still avoid hanging out washing in those nights.

Traditional German Christmas food

Each December, cinemas and university halls screen the 1944 comedy Die Feuerzangenbowle, often with the audience drinking the flaming punch it is named after.

Silvester and Epiphany

New Year's Eve, Silvester, is celebrated with fireworks at midnight and, on television, Dinner for One, a short English-language comedy sketch recorded by the broadcaster NDR in 1963 that has become a fixture of New Year's Eve in German-speaking countries. On 6 January, Epiphany, groups of Sternsinger (star-singers) dressed as the Three Kings go from house to house collecting for charitable causes, and chalk the year and the letters C+M+B, Christus mansionem benedicat ("Christ bless this house"), above the door. Epiphany is a public holiday in Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria and Saxony-Anhalt, and it marks the end of the Christmas season.

German Christmas season dates 2026

Christmas in Germany: frequently asked questions

Christmas in nearby countries