Why do we celebrate every New Year’s Eve like the one before but expect the coming year to turn out differently?

I looked out our kitchen window yesterday and saw two teenage boys across the street standing in front of the carryout. Above their heads in the store window hung a large rocket-shaped balloon next to a banner announcing that here was the place to get the best deal on fireworks. Each boy wore a baseball cap and had an open beer bottle in his left hand. They stood like that, wordless. After a few minutes, one boy reached into his pocket and pulled something small out. The other boy reached over with his free hand and held his lighter to it. The first boy then threw the object into the street, where it exploded with a loud pop. Neither of them showed any reaction. A sip of beer. Another firecracker. No reaction. When I left the window, they were still there, blowing up their allowance.

So runs New Year’s Eve in my neck o’ Dresden, the Neustadt. Get money from parents, buy firecrackers, light firecrackers, listen to firecrackers blow up below your bedroom window at 3 o’clock in the morning. Repeat for three days. This is fun. This year Katrin and I are tearing ourselves away from the pyrotechnic party around here and heading for the more, hrrmpf, civilized territory in the family-friendly* neighborhood of Strießen. We’ll be spending the evening with our friends Susi and Stefan, who, with a baby of their own, are on the same wavelength of New Year’s Eve celebrating. By no means should that be understood as apple juice, Dick Clark and dozing on the couch by 10:45. As tasty as apple juice is, it’s beer and wine for tonight, though a doze at 10:45 doesn’t sound like a bad idea – just a quick catnap.

Katrin and I carted Lloyd to Jacques’ Wein Depot for some supplies. Jacques’ is a franchise wine store not far from us. The chain is quite popular in Germany because you may try any wine it offers before you buy it. Just walk in, grab yourself a clean glass, and go to it! Naturally it would be too easy to abuse Jacques’ generosity and inebriate yourself from a freshly opened bottle of Australian Shiraz then turn around and walk back out, that is, if you can still turn and walk. But with so many wines to choose from – I believe roughly 200 – what’s the fun in ruining a perfect opportunity to sample the selection? And even that is a deceptively difficult task. When you first walk in, the place looks like this:

Find a bottle with an exotic name or a pretty label, and pour just enough into your glass to get the idea. After 6 or 7 ideas, the place starts to look like this:

No matter how grown-up and disciplined you try to approach it, it’s impossible to wine taste without soon making declarations of love to Jacques while sprawled across his check-out counter. It didn’t help matters that Katrin is nursing right now, leaving the majority of the tasting to me. Five or seven wines later, my mouth filled with more notes than Santa’s mailbox in December, I was convinced I liked them all. Sadly, we could only pick five. I paid at the counter without telling Jacques of my feelings for him (though I believe he caught my wink), and Katrin and I stuffed the bottles into the stroller bag hanging from the handles.

And slowly walked home.

Happy New Year, Jacques. See you soon.

* = quiet by 7 pm

I’m not sorry to see Christmas go - I rarely am. There are only so many warm, candle-lit moments filled with hot cocoa and turtleneck sweaters I can take before the sweetness starts to rot my teeth. Let’s face it: We’re not kids anymore, and with each passing year it becomes more difficult to forget that fact even for just a few weeks in December. My tolerance for warm fuzzies was higher this year than Christmases yore, however. At three months old, Lloyd may not yet know the difference between Santa Claus and a lump of coal, but it still didn’t seem too early to put a little more effort into decorating (quality- not quantity-wise) and then making the time to enjoy it all as a family. Shucks, I even had some fun.

Below are some of the pictures and observations that made up my Christmas this year. Hope yours was just as merry and bright.

Santa has nine trusty reindeer, you say? I’d check the stall again if I were you. Finnish poachers rounded up a couple of St. Nick’s more comestible caribou and served them up as Reindeerwurst with bread and mustard at one of Dresden’s Christmas markets. Once you get past the guilt, they taste pretty good. Now munch away, munch away, munch away all!

Christmas means baking. Here’s Katrin in up to her elbows in Plätzchen (cookie) dough.

This year she tried a new recipe obtained from a friend. Most holiday Plätzchen are rather dull to the tongue, but this particular batch was filled with cocoa and spices.

The poor things never made it to the cookie jar.

I took this picture while on a morning walk with Lloyd around nearby Alaunpark in the Neustadt. We’ve yet to see any snow this winter, which is why I got a bit over-enthusiastic about a little frost on a rare, sub-zero-degree day.

Katrin, Lloyd and I ducked into the local Markthalle (market hall) to warm up one windy evening after having some Glühwein (hot, spiced wine) at the Christmas market.

I could almost feel the pain of this solitary Christmas tree as it struggled to brighten the foyer of a school where I teach.

The world-famous Herrnhuter star. This one adorns an already attractive doorway of a popular bakery in Dresden’s Loschwitz.

I’m almost embarrassed to admit that my first thought when seeing the Christmas tree at the top of this crane was “However on earth did they get that heavy thing up there? Why, they’d need a cra- … Oh.”

Of all the ornaments and decorations in the kingdom, the little Pinecone Talisman is the favorite of Katrin and me. I’m not sure why. Maybe we’re impressed by his ability to grasp despite an apparent lack of fingers or opposable thumb. Katrin’s mom always puts him on a ledge in the kitchen. Great sense of balance, too.

Oma couldn’t wait to commandeer Lloyd when we visited them for three days, and Lloyd seemed happy to comply. We were even largely relieved of diaper-changing duties. Well, okay, but just this once.

My mother-in-law, the nonpareil do-it-all of the modern woman, even finds time to play a very convincing Weihnachtsmann for her grandchildren.

An early and sad ending to Germany’s most popular Christmas market. The Advents-Spektakel in the royal stables at the center of Dresden’s baroque Old Town was always the highlight of our Christmas. (The cupola of the Frauenkirche can be seen jutting out in the back.) A fire shut things down early this year, damaging the castle’s beautiful facade and jeopardizing the market’s future.

I just celebrated the last of the Christmas parties with my English classes this week. Every December, as the autumn semester comes to a close and the students begin showing worrying signs of English fatigue – blank stares, increased absences, homework written in crayon – I use our last meeting to eat cookies, drink Glühwein and play some games. We still speak English, and the games are Christmas-related – taboo and hangman with words like “plum pudding” and “regifting”. My students always show an interest in the Christmas culture in English-speaking countries, though I can only speak intelligently about general American customs and Christmases in London during the time of Ebenezer Scrooge. To help me with this, I pass out articles on the histories of Christmas trees and Santa Claus as well as copies of songs such as Frosty the Snowman and Good King Wenceslas. Now, I couldn’t hit a note squarely if you got it drunk beforehand and had two bruisers hold it up straight while I took aim. Nevertheless I still manage to approximate the melodies well enough to get us through a few verses before common self-dignity compels us to find another activity. This year I decided to introduce “A Visit From St. Nicholas” aka “’Twas the Night Before Christmas”, a standard in the Yuletide anthology since 1823. The idea was that each student read a stanza in turn, and we would work through the difficult vocabulary together. We got through stirring creatures, arising clatters and throwing open sashes without much confusion. And just when I thought we were in the clear until being tarnished with ashes and soot later on, a single, seemingly harmless word brought us to an abrupt halt. The nature of this vocabulary problem wasn’t so much academic as it was cultural, not to mention extremely awkward. It came when St. Nick is calling out to his ‘coursers’. Haike, one of the shyer students in the class, began reading: “Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now Prancer and … Vixen?” Her face immediately glowed red as she looked down at the table, lips pressed tightly together. There was a general shuffle among the students. A few tried to suppress giggles. After a brief pause that only enhanced Haike’s obvious embarrassment, another student raised his hand. “Is that his real name?” he asked. I told him it was and, as was clear from the difference in spelling, was in no way connected with its German homophone, wichsen – to jerk off. Seeing that Haike needed some time to compose herself, I asked the next student to continue reading. She did not begin the stanza again, but picked up right after where Haike had left off, “On Comet! on Cupid! on Donder and Blitzen!”

Merry Christmas to all.

My friends call me Vick

The Christmas market burned down this week, a bad omen to be sure. It wasn’t the only market in the city – not even the biggest one – but according to a recent survey of 23,600 visitors to 130 Christmas markets in Germany and Austria, it was the most popular in the entire country. Preliminary findings suggest improper use of electrical equipment, which is ironic, because this particular market was designed as one from the Middle Ages. Merchants dressed as if they were about to perform in the school Christmas pageant, and alcoholic drinks with names like Grog (grog) and Met (mead) were served in clayware mugs, which, for a deposit of 3 euros, made a nice souvenir. The stands featured handmade foods and goods – a welcomed contrast to the made-in-sweatshop offerings of the bigger markets – and oil lamps and candles were the only sources of illumination. The event was held in the cozy confines of the royal stables next to the Residenzschloß in the Old Town (Olde Towne?), so it was better to go during the week, when there weren’t so many people jams. Like the majority of those surveyed, I looked forward to that market more than any other. Now it’s not certain if we can look forward to next year at all. At least I got my clay mug to remember it by.

Souvenir from Germany’s most popular Christmas market