Webmaster Note: Contrary to what you may be thinking, this is a serious issue which seems to get German expatriots truly in a pickle. Is the pickle as un-German as German chocolate cake or the dreaded Schnitzelbank? Is it something that's gone back and forth between Germany-USA or USA-Germany in isolated circles? During my time in Germany, there were numerous things I encountered that were supposedly American, but I can't say my passions were ever roused to a comparable degree by any of these miconceptions. The German-American pickle truly creates a sour taste in the mouths of many Germans. Read on and maybe you'll get a taste.

HERE'S THE SITUATION: Parents hide the pickle ornament in the Christmas tree, and whatever child finds it first on Christmas morning gets a little extra treat. Is this story fact or fiction?

My husband and I were trying to find a Christmas Pickle for our Christmas tree when I came upon your website and it appeared you haven't run across anyone from Germany who knew about the Pickle. I knew one. My family started the Christmas pickle tradition after our foreign exchange student from East Berlin, Germany was with us in 1997. She told us about this pickle tradition her family had and we adapted it to our family. It made her feel at home, she found the pickle that year...but in our defense she had about 15 years of practice and me and my sister had never hunted for a pickle in a tree here in Virginia. So there you go, we Americans learned about the Christmas pickle from our German Foreign exhange student in 1997.
December 23, 2005

1. OK. I have spoken to this legend more than once, but I would be more than happy to repeat this. Here is the story that I have deeply researched.

The first time I heard of this was about 9 years ago. One of my students gave it to me for a present for Christmas. Never heard of it! The "Germans" hang a lot of things on their trees, but not vegetables. They put on fruit and candy and cookies, but pickles? Well, this was more that I could handle. So I started calling friends.

* None of my German friends here in the US had ever heard of this. They came from Hannover area, Hamburg, Rheinland, Bavaria, northern Austria and my family is from Bavarian and Switzerland and we had never heard of this.

* Step #2. I have three partner schools that I work with. One is in Bernstadt, near the Czech border, near G=F6rlitz, the whole area = where glass was first blown to make ornaments for the trees. School #2 is in Durach just south of Kempten. School #3 is in Soest when one of our teachers has had an exchange going on for the past 10 years. No one had ever heard of it.

* Step #3. I have good friends who live in Kahla, just south of Jena, south of Berlin in the area of Weimar. They had never heard of it. They started calling around Germany. They found no one that had heard of this legend.

* Step #4. In 1995 I traveled to Germany to visit the friends in Kahla. They drove me to the Christmas shops in Zwiesel and in Goerlitz where glass ornaments have been made for 100's of years. They thought I was crazy when I told them that this pickle thing is going around the United States.

THEN.... Much to my chagrin I visited the Christmas market in Chicago last year or ... Was it the year before, but anyway, there I saw "THE PICKLE". You can imagine how mortified I was to see this. So I went up to one of the sales girls and asked in English. She gave me the same story we all have been reading. Now, this shop was from Zwiesel!!! They had never had it before. So, being further frustrated, I went up the to the "manager" of the booth and asked him in German. He rather hemmed and hawed, and then added " Well, it sells and makes money."

I had also heard that someone in Frankenmuth, MI, who is part Polish and part German, did this, had the pickle, or made the whole thing up. Good marketing, huh?

So, I KNOW, this did not originate in Germany. After all my travels in search of the pickle, I found NO ONE who lived, in Germany, who knew anything about it. Maybe I spread it to Germany. God Forbid!!!

2. Davon habe ich in der Tat noch nie gehoert. Ich muss gestehen, dass ich wahrscheinlich auch in Zukunft nicht irgendwelches Gemuese im Weihnachtsbaum verstecken werde. Das scheint mir beinahe eher eine Adaption oesterlicher Traditionen zu sein. :-)

3. I had to chuckle as I read Ellie's whole story about the German Christmas pickle, because I went through something similar to find out if the story was true. My mom's side of the family (including Mom) is 100 percent German background and/or immigrated over. Mom had never heard of it, and she could quote all kinds of other Christmas rareties to me. So I asked my cousins in Germany---oh, they got a good laugh out of it. My paternal family side is also fully German, and they had never heard of the pickle. Before several Philipp family members got up in years and no longer could recall stuff, my brother and I interviewed them extensively, and we asked about specific holiday traditions. Other things were mentioned in detail, but no one ever mentioned hiding the pickle. Finally, I tracked down a glass pickle at a large Christmas store when I was living in Tulsa, and the pickle was made in China..... ;)

The Christmas pickle is along the same order of GOTTA-BE-TRUE as the issue of German chocolate cake...which is fully American in origin.

4. Didn't we have a discussion on this quite some time in the past? At that point I think someone explained that this is a German-American custom, which is essentially unknown in Germany (although the German ornaments industry has caught on). This is similar to the "Schnitzelbank" (no more comments on this topic, please!), which is FAR better known in German-American circles than in Germany itself.

5. The first time I heard of this supposed pickle custom was in a term paper on German-American practices turned in by a student last semester. She encountered it back where she came from, which was, if memory serves, Wapakoneta, OH or some other medium-sized town near there, more or less in the west-central part of the state.

Then I remembered that on a stopover in that town or Lima, perhaps, not far from there, during a week-long, 3000- strong bike ride, we had offered to us, among other tasty foods, (and nowhere else on that or other rides I've been on), a pickle. I don't even remember how it was "prepared," but it seemed to be some kind of local delicacy and the folks around there made quite a big deal of it.

Relation to the German Christmas Pickle unknown. (Frankenmuth, for the record, is only about three hours up the road from there.)

6. I live right in between Lima & Wapak. I also heard the whole pickle thing here, but only in recent years. Several people from here do go to Frankenmuth, Michigan, though.I think the "delicacy" you're talking about might be a deep-fried pickle. I've never had one, but a lot of places advertise them.

One legend has St. Nikolaus saving two buys who'd been stuffed in a pickle barrel.

I think it is mainly a German-American custom (like the "Schnitzelbank":) ). This summer, as I was talking to a German colleague, he told me how amazed he was that a glass factory he knows exports a glass pickle to the US as Christmas decoration. He is a hobby folklorist and had no idea what German glass pickles were doing on US Chirstmas trees.

Every year around Christmas time I'm inundated with emails asking about the German tradition of hiding a pickle ornament on the Christmas tree. I vaguely recalled seeing fancy glass Christmas ornaments shaped like a pickle in the United States, but nothing resembling a pickle ever crossed my path in Germany during Christmas.

I did some first-hand research, asking friends, acquaintances, and even a few Christmas market vendors if they knew of the custom. I consulted my family in Bavaria, my best friend in Swabia, and folks who hailed from the different regions of Germany. No one had a clue as to what I was talking about. One acquaintance wanted to know if I wasn't trying to pull one over on her -- her experience being that Americans exercise an odd sense of humor at times. A couple of Christmases came and went with no resolution to the mystery of the Christmas Pickle.

Well, Christmas 1998 was the year I got the answer -- or at least I hope I got the answer. Maybe you can help me decide whether Cindy, who sent me the explanation, has the story behind the legend, or is instead exercising that American odd sense of humor.

According to an email Cindy sent me in early November 1998, the tradition may be an American one, though of German descent. Cindy wrote to me of her great-great-grandfather John Lower, who was born in Bavaria in 1842. After coming with his family to the United States, he fought in the American Civil War. John Lower was captured and sent to prison in Andersonville, Georgia. If you know your American history, you can guess as to the conditions. In poor health and starving, he begged a guard for just one pickle before he died. The guard took pity on him and found a pickle for John Lower. According to family lore, John said that the pickle -- by the grace of God -- gave him the mental and physical strength to live on. Once he was reunited with his family he began a tradition of hiding a pickle on the Christmas tree. The first person who found the pickle on Christmas morning would be blessed with a year of good fortune.

Since I haven't heard another likely scenario, I'm leaning toward adopting Cindy's story of her great-great-grandfather as the Germany for Visitors Official Legend of the Christmas Pickle. On my mother's side, I'm the first not to be born in Bavaria since long before it was called Bavaria. With that kind of background, I can truly believe that a starving Bavarian in a Georgia prison would ask for a pickle. After all, everybody knows Georgians can't brew beer

Rita Mace W
http://gogermany.about.com/travel/gogermany/library/weekly/aa120898.htm?iam=

growing up in Germany (Mainz), celebrating Christmas often at my sisters = house in Stuttgart, living then in the south, in Freiburg and in Switzerl= and etc. etc. I never came across a pickle on a Christmas tree. (This thi= ng must have been hidden very well!!) The first time I saw such a thing a= s an ornament, was when an American student gave me one for Christmas her= e in the States. Does this explain the myth?

Kaethe Wohlfahrt sells these pickles. At least the store in Oberammergau has them - two types. I bought one there 18 months ago.

If I remember correctly from the thread last year (and that is a big IF), the pickle tradition is a regional tradition - in a very small unnamed region. Since Germans decorate their tree on the 24th and usually without the kids helping, the parents want their children to spend time admiring the tree before they dug into their gifts. A ceramic green pickle ornament was hidden somewhere among the other decorations on the tree and the first kid to find it received an extra gift. That's the story I give my kids when they ask about the pickle ornament.

Comment: The summer before last I visited Lauschka. There is not such thing as this pickle. They have never made one, nor has any German.

Reply: Our partner school was near Lauscha. I have a student who has a pickle from Lauscha (1994). Some factory in Lauscha has made a glass pickle. The "legend" may not be German at all, but they have at least learned to capitalize on it.

Another comment: The tradition of trying to find the little ornament shaped like a pickle - hidden deep among the green boughs on Christmas Eve - began many years ago in Laschau, Germany. As the story goes, the lucky child who found the ornament on Christmas morning may have received an extra gift from St. Nicholas. If the family could not afford such extras, the pickle finder was rewarded by being the first to open presents. Production of the blown glass Christmas ornament started in 1890s.

I've lived in Heidelberg as a teenager and was stationed in Frankfurt for two years in the military. I've traveled Germany and Europe fairly extensively and am fortunate to go over on business about 3 times a year lately. I also have not run into too many Germans familiar with the tradition.

In Appleton, Wisconsin and it's strong heritage of German transplants, I have also run into dozens that said they never heard of the tradition. But I have to admit that I have run into a couple that say they remember this from Germany. Only a few mind you. But then it's difficult to say how accurate the information really is.

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