Christmas in the Mountains

Christmas markets: they open in the days before the first Advent. Freiberg’s Christmarkt, its more than ninety huts dressed in the miners’ tradition since 2012, opens on the Tuesday; Annaberg-Buchholz’s on the Friday, and it runs until December 23. Down in Dresden, outside the mountains, the Striezelmarkt, first recorded in 1434 and one of Germany’s oldest Christmas markets, has sold Erzgebirge toys since around 1700.

Setting the pyramids turning: on the Friday evening or Saturday before the first Advent Sunday, towns and villages gather around their great outdoor pyramids to start them for the season, often to a miners’ brass band. The first of these giant town pyramids turned in Frohnau, today part of Annaberg-Buchholz, in December 1933; by 2014 the Erzgebirge district counted about 150. In Schwarzenberg the pyramid keeps turning until Epiphany.

Candle arches in the windows: arches, angels and miners go up behind the glass, until, in the words of Saxony’s own campaign, there is “hardly a window without a Schwibbogen.” The custom has old roots in the mines: at the Himmelsfürst mine near Freiberg, every window of the mine buildings once held twelve candles in the early morning of December 24, bought by the miners themselves. The arch in every household window spread in the 20th century. That the lights guided the miners home is a tradition, and a beautiful one.

Neighbors’ evenings, from the old local phrase hutzen gehen, to go visiting the neighbors. On winter evenings families gathered in one house to save fuel, “Hutzen statt heizen,” huddle instead of heat: the women at their lace pillows, the men joining after the shift with talk, stories and songs. Central heating and television nearly ended it; today towns and inns hold Hutzen evenings again.

Miners’ parades: some fifteen to twenty march through Saxony each Advent, in black parade dress, with lamps and miners’ bands. Freiberg’s torchlight parade falls on the Saturday before the second Advent; Schneeberg’s Lichtelfest, its festival of lights, on the second Advent weekend; and in 2025, after fourteen years, the great parade returned to Dresden on the Saturday before the fourth. The season closes in Annaberg-Buchholz on the fourth Advent Sunday, when more than a thousand marchers fill the town and the miners’ bands play together before St. Annen. The parades have been on Germany’s national inventory of intangible cultural heritage since 2016.

The last shift: the miners’ final shift before Christmas. At the Himmelsfürst mine it began at four in the morning on December 24: the foreman read the Christmas devotion, an organ played in the mine house, and underground the men set candles on every ledge of rock. They worked only until the main break, then sat together, ate, told stories, sang carols and went up early. Mining clubs still hold Mettenschichten in old mines through Advent.

Nine kinds: on Christmas Eve the family sits down to a supper of nine dishes, already sung about in 1799. Every family’s nine are a little different, but the wishes behind them are the same: lentils or millet for small change (“as many grains, so many thalers”), dumplings for big money, sauerkraut so the year won’t turn sour, sausage or roast for strength. Bread and salt stand on the table, and in some villages no one may get up until the meal is done.