So hereīs how we celebrate Christmas in Germany:
For the Germans, Christmas is a family event, and - as in Sweden - Christmas Eve is "gift-giving day". Iīm sure no-one here could wait until the 25th
When thereīs enough snow in town, we start Christmas Eve at about 10 am and go sledging / sledding with some friends. Thatīs not a typical German thing to do, itīs just sort of a personal tradition; usually our little "sledging group" is all alone on that little snow-covered mountain in a park nearby.
After that we go home, and I start the cooking (we usually have about 15 guests for Christmas dinner). Around 4 pm the grannies pick up the children and take them for church. Iīm not religios, actually, but the children love it, the grannies love it, so itīs the best thing for them to shorten the time.
Children, grannies and the rest of the family arrive at about 6 pm, we have dinner and then we go upstairs, sing Christmas songs on our balcony (yes, our neighbours are indeed very pitiable) and look out for the Christkind. My husband suddenly has to look for the fireplace or finds another reason not to join us, because he has to put the presents under the Christmas tree while we are upstairs. After heīs finished he runs through our garden and plays his traditional role as Christkind, i.e. he hides in the trees (we have about 12 huge spruces in our garden) and kindles a sparkler (that sounds much sillier than it actually is). One of us still standing on the balcony shouts " There, the Christkind was here!!" and all children (5 altogether) run down the stairs and head for the Christmas tree and the gifts.
The rest of the evening is usually spent with testing some new toys of the children, talking and sipping some wine punch. People leave at around 11 pm.
Before we had children we used to go to a cinema afterwards. Some of our friends work there and they used to schedule a private viewing only for friends at midnight. We saw some typical Chirstmas movies like Terminator or Aliens
That was quite fun, too.