My mother’s Oma refused to do laundry during the Twelve Days of Christmas. To me, this makes perfect sense. The Christmas Season is just so busy; who wants to do laundry? But the reason goes deeper, to the legends of the Rauhnacht. The Rauhnächte is the time between the years when old memories carry out traditions from pagan times in…
Category: German legends
The Linden tree in Germany – The Tree at the Heart of Germany
A friend sent me a clip from a news story out of West Virginia about the removal of a Linden Tree. What made him curious was not the toys found under the tree; it was the tree itself. This particular tree was the last survivor of three Linden trees brought to the United States by German immigrants. Why, he asked,…
Frau Perchta? Goddess or Belly-Slitter?
Deep in the Alpine region of Germany, two frightening beings bookend the Christmas Season. Krampus roams on December 5th, and Frau Perchta is associated with Berchentag, the Feast of the Epiphany, on January 6th. But Who is Frau Perchta? Or WHAT is Frau Perchta? Is she an evil hag who kills lazy women and children? Or is she a beautiful…
German Good Luck Symbols- We Could All Use a Little Luck
You see them everywhere in Germany, especially around Christmas and the New Year: Toadstool ornaments, Chimney Sweet figures, Marzipan Piggies with coins or 4 Leaf Clover in their mouths. These German good luck symbols didn’t just come out of nowhere; they all have history and legend to explain why they are lucky. Some luck charms go back to Pagan times,…
Rübezahl! The legendary Silesian Lord of the Mountains!
I strolled down memory lane, sorting through a box of my old childhood Story Albums sent to America by my Opa. Max und Moritz, Kinder Märchen, and then a brown album with a scary brown giant on the cover, Rübezahl! I loved listening to this one as a child. (Records or vinyl, for those of you too young to remember,…
What is the Vogelhochzeit? It’s a song to Welcome Spring!
Germans love to sing, and they especially love their folk songs. One of my favorite German Folk Songs is “Vogelhochzeit.” In German School, I loved singing the fi-de-ralala part over and over. And with so many verses, the song can go on longer than the Twelve Days of Christmas! (I have a feeling that’s why my German School teacher seldom…
Edelweiss! All about this Legendary Alpine Flower
When I was a little girl, my Opa sent me a card with a dried pressed edelweiss flower and a miniature hiker’s axe. I loved pulling back the protective cover and petting the soft, fuzzy petals. For years, that card sat on my bookshelf, and I would imagine the mysterious, far-off mountain it came from. You see, I grew up…
Castle Frankenstein in Germany- A Castle Swirled in Mystery and Legend
What’s it like to visit Burg Frankenstein? One beautiful Summer’s day (still months away from the annual Halloween Festival), so we weren’t scared of monsters or things that go bump in the night. Three of us drove to Darmstadt, and up the mountain to visit Frankenstein’s Castle. We enjoyed climbing around the ruins and imagining what the castle was like before…
A German Kitchen Witch Brings Good Luck to Your Kitchen!
When I was growing up, my mother always had a flying Kitchen Witch hanging in the kitchen window. And naturally, as an adult with my own kitchen, I have one too. Now, the legend says that a German Kitchen Witch will protect your food as you cook it. No more pots boiling over, no more burnt cakes, just delicious foods that…
The Pied Piper of Hamelin Story-800 Year Mystery Wrapped in Fairy Tale
When I was growing up, one of my favorite German fairy tale vinyl records had the Rattenfänger von Hameln story, the Pied Piper of Hamelin Story. As a child, the idea of all those kids being snatched up because the town fathers didn’t want to pay the exterminator’s bill made a HUGE impression on me. I listened over and over,…