Lena from Ohio Asks Santa About Christmas Markets
Dear Santa,
My name is Lena and I am eleven years old. I live in Cincinnati, Ohio, and every December my family goes to the Cincinnati Christkindlmarkt downtown, where we drink hot chocolate and my dad always tries the bratwurst and says it is "almost as good as the real thing" even though he has never actually been to Germany, which my mom points out every single year and he ignores every single year.
I have three questions.
Where did Christmas markets actually come from and are they as old as they seem?
Why do so many German towns claim to have "the oldest" Christmas market, and how do we know which one is really first?
Why did European countries split into Catholic and Protestant regions, and did that affect how Christmas is celebrated?
Thank you.
Lena Marie Hoffmann
Cincinnati, Ohio
Dear Lena,
Your father's annual bratwurst claim and your mother's annual correction of it is, I will tell you, one of the most reliable Christmas traditions in the entire Hoffmann household calendar, and I suspect it will continue for a great many years to come regardless of what either of them actually believes about German sausage. Some traditions exist for the food. Some exist for the argument about the food. Both are valid. Now, your questions, which are excellent and which I will take in order.
Where Christmas markets actually came from.
Christmas markets are older than most people realise, but not quite as old as the romantic story suggests, and I think you deserve the honest version rather than the postcard version.
The earliest ancestor of the Christmas market was not really about Christmas at all. In 1296, Duke Albert I of Austria granted Viennese traders the right to hold a "December market" — a practical winter fair where townspeople could stock up on meat, warm clothing, and other necessities before the cold months made travel and trade difficult. Similar December markets appeared in Munich around 1310, Bautzen in 1384, and Frankfurt in 1393. These were not Christmas markets in the way you would recognise one today. They were simply seasonal markets that happened to occur in December, with no particular religious or festive theme attached to them.
The market most historians point to as the first genuine Christmas market — one actually tied to the Christmas season rather than just occurring in winter — is the Striezelmarkt in Dresden, first documented in 1434 under Frederick II of Saxony. From there, the tradition spread slowly across German-speaking Europe: Strasbourg by 1570, Nuremberg by 1628, growing town by town over centuries rather than appearing all at once. The markets your family visits today, with their wooden huts, twinkling lights, and mulled wine, carry real historical weight, but the cosy, ancient feeling they create is itself, historians point out, partly a nineteenth-century invention — a nostalgic atmosphere deliberately built up during the Victorian era's romantic obsession with imagined medieval Christmases, layered onto a tradition that was originally far more practical and commercial than sentimental. The market is old. The magic feeling is a little younger than the market itself. Both are real. I find no contradiction in that.
Why do so many German towns claim to have "the oldest" Christmas market?
This is a wonderful question and the honest answer is: because the record is genuinely unclear, and because civic pride does not enjoy admitting uncertainty.
Vienna's December market dates to 1296, which makes it the oldest documented winter market of any kind — but scholars are careful to note it was not a Christmas market in any meaningful sense, simply a seasonal trading fair. Bautzen received its market rights in 1384 specifically to allow butchers to sell meat through the Christmas season, which gives it a Christmas connection earlier than Dresden, but historians studying the records carefully — including researchers at Charles Sturt University who specialise in this exact question — have noted that whether this truly constitutes a Christkindlesmarkt in the full sense is genuinely disputed among scholars. Dresden's Striezelmarkt, dated to 1434, is the market most often crowned "the first true Christmas market" because it has operated under that specific Christmas identity, with documented continuity, for the longest unbroken stretch — and Dresden, accordingly, proudly and consistently markets itself today as "the oldest Christmas market in Germany."
So who is actually first depends entirely on which definition you accept: oldest December market of any kind (Vienna), oldest market with a Christmas-season meat-trading purpose (Bautzen), or oldest continuously operating market specifically branded and understood as a Christmas market (Dresden). Each city has a genuine claim under its own definition, and none of them is lying exactly — they are simply each choosing the definition that lets them win. This happens more often in history than people realise, Lena. Most arguments about who was "first" are really arguments about which rules you are using to measure it. I would encourage you to remember this the next time anyone tells you a fact with total confidence and no footnote.
Why did European countries split into Catholic and Protestant, and did that affect Christmas?
This is your social studies question and it connects directly back to the markets you visit every December, so I am glad you asked it third rather than first — the order makes the answer easier to follow.
In 1517, a German monk named Martin Luther published a set of objections to practices within the Catholic Church — particularly the selling of indulgences, which were payments believed to reduce punishment for sins — and nailed them, according to tradition, to the door of a church in Wittenberg. This act is generally considered the beginning of the Protestant Reformation, a movement that split Western Christianity into Catholic regions, which remained loyal to the Pope in Rome, and Protestant regions, which broke away and developed their own churches, doctrines, and practices. Over the following century, this split reshaped the map of Europe — northern Germany, England, Scandinavia, and parts of Switzerland became largely Protestant, while southern Germany, Austria, France, Spain, Italy, and Poland remained largely Catholic, and the boundary between them was drawn, often violently, through wars that lasted well over a hundred years.
And yes, Lena, this absolutely changed how Christmas was celebrated, in a way that connects directly to the markets your family visits. Before the Reformation, the major midwinter gift-giving occasion in German-speaking lands was December 6th, Saint Nicholas Day, when children received gifts from Saint Nicholas in recognition of his generosity and sainthood. Martin Luther, as part of his broader effort to move Christian practice away from the veneration of saints, wanted to shift the focus of gift-giving away from Saint Nicholas entirely. He encouraged families to give gifts on December 24th instead, attributed not to a saint but to the Christkind — the Christ Child — directly. This is precisely why so many German Christmas markets are called Christkindlmarkt rather than something referencing Saint Nicholas: the name itself is a four-hundred-year-old fossil of the Reformation, still being shouted across town squares every December by vendors who have likely never thought about why the market is called what it is called.
So when you stand in the Cincinnati Christkindlmarkt with your hot chocolate, listening to your father defend bratwurst he has never had on its home soil, you are standing inside the after-effects of a religious split that began with one monk and a list of complaints in 1517, reshaped the entire continent of Europe, and changed who German children believed brought their Christmas gifts. The market itself — the wooden huts, the lights, the carols — is the visible, cheerful surface. Underneath it is five hundred years of theology, politics, and one stubborn German monk who was very sure he was right. I have watched the whole thing unfold from above, Lena, century after century, and I will tell you: very few Christmas traditions are as simple as they look from the outside. Yours is built on more history than almost anyone standing in line for Glühwein realises.
Merry Christmas, Lena. Go back to the Christkindlmarkt this year and look at the name on the sign with new eyes. And tell your father that whether or not the bratwurst is "almost as good as the real thing," the tradition he is standing inside of is entirely real, has been for nearly six hundred years, and does not require a trip to Germany to count.
Your friend,
Santa Claus
The North Pole
P.S. The North Pole has its own version of a Christmas market, run by the elves every December, selling roughly nothing because everything is already promised to someone, but featuring excellent mulled cider and a wood-carving stall that several elves take more seriously than their actual job descriptions. Mrs. Claus calls it "morale." She is, as always, correct.
christmas-markets.org https://santaclaus.top/tell-me-about-christmas-markets/
Comments
Post a Comment