Christmas Pickle

After several hours of hard studying I went to the christmas market with my friend K. As I'm looking for some nice christmas tree ornaments to give to my mom for christmas, we checked out all the stores that sold those ornaments.
I didn't find anything that suited my taste, but there were certainly a great number of "interesting" ornaments available.
K had already told me that she'd spotted a cucumber ornament the other day. According to her, she was ready to die now, for the christmas pickle had given her the feeling that she'd seen "anything there is to see".
She showed me the cucumber ornament and I tried hard to keep my laughter inside --- the shop assistants were nearby, so it wouldn't be good manners to laugh at the products they're selling.

Buaaaaaht I was able to take a photo (thanks to K who covered my camera from the shop assistants' looks) of this interesting thing.


We proceeded to the next store. It had christmas tree ornament muffins, and christmas tree ornament south africa flags, and christmas tree ornament shocking pink high heels, and christmas tree ornament police officers, aaaannddd----- christmas tree pickled cucumbers.

Now I was getting curious. What the hell was that all about? Cucumbers? K. grabbed a flyer that told the legend of the cucumber. I didn't read it, but I decided to check on the almighty www.

Sooo...... for further reading I recommend this article, written by (as far as I can tell) an American for American readers.

Apparently there is a pickled cucumber myth going around in the US. They say that the Germans are hanging one little cucumber into the christmas tree. On christmas morning, when everyone unpacks their presents, the one who first discovers the pickle in the tree will be rewarded by St. Nick with an extra present.

As we Germans are neither given anything by St. Nick on the 25th of december, nor unpack our presents in the morning, this is clearly a myth, but it seems to be quite well-spread in the United States and it seems to come as a big surprise that no one in Germany has ever heard of the pickle custom.

Apart from the fact that I truly enjoyed reading about that cucumber myth I was slightly amused that they'd actually started to produce these ornaments and sell them on christmas markets in the center of Berlin. There are gazillions of tourists at these christmas markets, so you can bet there will by many of them who'll happily buy a christmas cucumber and take it home as a souvenir, being glad they found the myth to be true.
However, at the same time, as there are so many cucumbers for sale and they even come along with a piece of paper explaining the whole cucumber story, you bet there'll be some Germans buying these cucumbers.

So I started to think that it MIGHT happen: In four or five years, the cucumber custom might be known in Germany. I doubt that many Germans will really destroy their beautiful christmas tree atmosphere by using a cucumber (Spreewald area excluded, it'd be cool there), but I suppose there'll be more people knowing about that myth.
Maybe a generation later (or two) the christmas cucumber myth might truly find its way into our regional customs.