Holidays with a Swiss twist

It’s hard to believe that Christmas Eve is just one week away! During this past week, we experienced even more Swiss holiday traditions.

Emily had two notable field trips. The first was to the Bern Puppentheater where her class watched the Christmas story – the one with baby Jesus and Mary and Joseph – enacted with puppets. Puppet theaters are very European, as is bringing public school children to a religious show (on a train!). This morning, Emily’s class went ice skating at an indoor rink in the next town where they were given ice skating lessons. They will go ice skating twice more this winter to improve their skills.

On Thursday night, Emily’s school had Wintersauber, which is a social gathering where families come to see the crafts the children have made and hear them sing holiday songs. The singing took place outside where it was cold, dark, and crowded. To warm everyone up, there was mulled cider being served out of a cauldron over an open fire. It was BYOM – Bring Your Own Mug.

James is our little chef; he loves to help out in the kitchen. In his kindergarten, they do a surprising amount of baking. He has made traditional breads, snacks, and cookies. I, on the other hand, am not much of a baker, though I do have some favorite Christmas cookies we make back home. However, it has proven impossible to make the same cookies here as the ingredients aren’t available. So, today the kids and I attempted to make a couple of traditional Swiss Christmas cookies. Cookies are very different here than what we are used to. There are no chocolate chips to be found, no gingerbread, no sugar cookies. Swiss cookies are made with a lot of ground nuts (almonds and hazelnuts) and anise, their favorite flavoring (they even put it in toothpaste!). The most common holiday cookies are cinnamon stars or Zimtsterne. We also made Chräberli. Both recipes require a significant amount of setting time, so we won’t know how they turned out for a couple of days. If you want to give them a try, the recipes are here.

Tomorrow, Joe is giving me a “Mommy’s Day Off,” and I am planning to go to the Weihnachtsmarkt in Bern and see a holiday choral concert at the Cathedral. What a great early Christmas present!