In Which We Experience Our First Swiss Christmas

Now that our first holiday season in Switzerland is past, I finally have time to share some of the highlights.  Our generally quiet life here was enlivened by the arrival of my sister a week before Christmas and she stayed until January 2.  (There are three of us and though I'm sure you'd never guess it I am the oldest.  Visiting sister is the second in line, so I guess I will call her Middle Sister.)

The week before Christmas was largely occupied in introducing Middle Sister to Switzerland.  For the first time in my life, I had little gift shopping to do because we had gotten everything for our families before returning to the U.S. for Thanksgiving.  Moreover, The Spouse and I agreed to give each other ski equipment, not terribly romantic but essential at this point in our snow careers.  But MS had some gifts yet to purchase and so we headed to Zurich and Basel to look around.

Zurich's most famous shopping district is Bahnhofstrasse, a wide nineteenth-century boulevard stretching from the main train station to the Zurichsee, lined with super-high-end stores that compel window gazing even by non-shoppers like myself, if only to gawk at the price tags.  At this season the lights and Christmas decorations are a big draw.

Most cities and towns in Switzerland have their Weinachtsmarkt or Christmas Market.  (Baar's unfortunately, was a one-day affair that came and went while we were away for Thanksgiving.)  They seem to differ only in size, for each is composed up of a cluster of wooden booths or huts decorated with pine boughs or something equally Christmassy, and offering a standard array of crafts and wares appropriate for gift-giving, plus seasonal food and drink -- especially Glühwein (mulled wine) and hot chocolate, a variety of wursts and inevitably raclette.  This last is a quintessentially Swiss dish whose popularity is a mystery to me: raclette is a mild soft cheese that is unexceptionable except when it is heated to near burning, when it gives off a noxious smell.  The Swiss love to place it under a heating element until it begins to smoke, then scrape the semi-liquid top layer of cheese onto slices of cooked potatoes, tiny onions or pickles.  In this season it is popular to give little parties where everyone gathers around a table grill and melts the cheese in little metal scoops.  I guess it's one of those things that you just have to grow up into.

At any rate, the Zurich Weinachtsmarkt was held inside a cavernous hall attached to the main train station, so that the air was heavy with the mingled aroma of Glühwein and smoking raclette.  Hence, we didn't stay long, but we did enjoy the central attraction, a huge Christmas tree decorated with thousands of glittering Swarovski crystal ornaments.

We hastened back into the city to a catch an intriguing event that we'd seen advertised earlier in the day, billed as a "singing Christmas tree."  We secured seats in front of a large tiered stage decked with pine boughs and lights.  Soon a crowd of parents gathered and the tree began to fill with excited schoolchildren (and a few teachers) wearing identical red caps and scarves and green cloaks.  Perched atop the stand, this "singing tree" enthusiastically regaled us with a half-hour concert.  Most of the songs were in German and weren't familiar carols, but two were in English, showing that the Swiss begin English instruction early.  Here is one of them:

When we got home I posted the other English song on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FAUDgSq_YI

The next day we ventured farther afield, to Basel, which I had been told had an excellent Christmas Market.  And it was, although similarly redolent of smoking raclette.  MS purchased some beautifully carved ornaments and I fell in love with a charming black felt hat at the most wonderful haberdashery stand.  We returned to the market at the end of the day to find large crowds of locals gathered at the hot drinks stand.  Evidently the market is the place to be during the holiday season.  We had delicious hot chocolates in ceramic mugs specially marked with the 2010 Market logo and decided to forgo the 3 franc deposit and take them home as souvenirs.  (Not a bad price for a mug in Switzerland!)  During our tour of the rest of the city we visited the colorfully painted Rathaus, which featured a large tree decorated simply with large silver balls.

Baar Rathaus at Christmas

This restraint seems typical of Swiss Christmas decorations generally.  Streets everywhere were filled with delicate traceries of white lights, sidewalks filled with small simply decorated pine trees.  The Swiss love Christmas -- shops begin to fill with decorations in the middle of November -- but they don't overdo it.

Because most people live in apartments, there is less opportunity for the gaudy light displays that make suburban America famous, or infamous.  But every apartment seems to have a balcony, however small, and many folks decorate theirs with strings of white lights.  We did notice in Baar that where people live in townhouses, with entrances directly onto the street, they get more creative.

On the other hand, some tend toward more stereotyped Christmas fare.  We were amused by the SWAT Santas scaling the walls of one townhouse.  And then we started seeing the same rather sinister figures protruding from the walls of farmhouses around the region.

Now, I can't speak from direct observation about the way Swiss people decorate the inside of their homes for Christmas, because we have yet to be invited inside a home.  This isn't unusual, for we have been repeatedly told that the Swiss draw a strong line between their public and private lives.  Much socializing takes place in restaurants and only very close friends are invited home.  So you aren't likely to see the rush of holiday parties and open houses that are common in the U.S.  Parties are more intimate, about the number of guests that fit around a table for raclette or fondue.

Hence you will have to settle for a glimpse of our little place this Christmas.  We brought with us our creche, artificial tree and a few ornaments.  We bought lights and candles at Ikea and a few pine boughs at the local Migros, and MS, who is much more adept at this sort of thing, took the arranging in hand.

We did notice when visiting both Protestant and Catholic churches that they observe Advent, in that there are no Christmas decorations until Christmas Eve.  Large, stately pines stood in each church, completely bare of decoration, waiting until the evening of Christmas Eve to be decked out.  To my mind it is a fitting way to symbolize the hopeful, waiting spirit of Advent.

Switzerland has an interesting policy regarding holidays: if they happen to occur on a weekend, well and good, but there are no makeup days, no Friday or Monday vacation days.  Nevertheless, on the day before a holiday stores must close early, around 4 or 5 pm.  And so a hush fell over the neighborhood early on Christmas Eve, as the snow fell softly all around.  We celebrated by sharing our first-ever fondue using a new set, a gift from our family.  I was delighted to find broadcasts of carol services on British television -- nothing puts me in a Christmas mood better than English choristers.  At quarter to 11 pm, the bells of St. Martin's began to peal, calling the faithful to Midnight Mass.  It was a joyous sound, frequently repeated throughout the holiday week.

And then on to New Year's Eve -- Sylvester in Switzerland, after the saint whose feast day it is.  Shortly after Christmas, MS and I begin to notice strange objects in many shop windows -- little red mushrooms with white spots, cute pink pigs, ladybugs, four-leaf clovers, and chimney sweeps.  They were so ubiquitous that we began to realize that they were somehow related to New Year's.  An internet search confirmed this and the fact that New Year's celebrations in many places focus on talismans of good luck -- rather than the Old Man/Cherub images of the Old and New Year that predominate in America.  (The only good luck custom that I could recall being associated with New Year's was serving black-eyes peas, but that wasn't a custom we followed.)  So MS and I began to collect said talismans.  By Friday we lacked only a ladybug, and we charged The Spouse with acquiring one while we visited the top of Rigi (of which you will hear more in the next post).  He accomplished his mission admirably with an amazing torte from a local bakery, and we were set.

I have to confess that we are not huge fans of New Year's celebrations.  In fact, in recent years TS and I have tended to celebrate the new year about 7 pm in Pennsylvania, when it crosses Greenwich Mean Time, and go to bed early so as to beat the crowds to the ski slopes next morning.  After much channel surfing, we finally found an appropriate celebration at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin and settled in to wait for the new year.  All was quiet around us on the streets of Baar, until St. Martin's bells again began to peal at 11:45.  Soon they were joined by the pops and bangs of fireworks being set off throughout town.  Though each was small by the standard of professional displays, they were numerous and easily visible through our big windows, so that it seemed as though the town was putting on a display just for us.  The cacophany continued through the turning of the year and the bells pealed for another quarter of an hour.  Fireworks kept on sporadically and then stopped suddenly at 12:30, as though by edict.  We went off to bed feeling that we had somehow participated in a proper civic welcome to the New Year from within the comfort of our living room.

 

And now I'd like to wish all of you a happy, prosperous, and meaningful 2011!  Or, as we say here, Zweitausend Elf!