Christmas in Switzerland
by Sonis Jungo
Switzerland has many traditions for Christmas. Of course in the mountains you still find the very old Christmas tradition, while in the cities its about the same as everywhere else. Very often in the Christmas night people pass from one house to the other with candles and sing Christmas songs. Usually you invite them to come in and drink hot wine with you, because especially in the mountains the nights are very clear and extremely cold. Temperature -25C are not so unusual. In the mountains another tradition: costumes men only wearing old hand painted masks with a whole miniature village on their top. The costumes hanging full of bells, are decorated with material from the forest, it can be nuts, or moss. You' hear them already from very far away, when they ru through the village after midnight. In another valley where my mother grew up they also wear manufactured costumes, but instead of nice masks they use hand carved wooden masks, looking very scary in the light. They run with their wooden sticks after people, the tradition is not only for Christmas, but aso to state that winter is here. Usually after midnight mass everybody drinks hot wine (mulled claret) at the parsonage. Then you get yourself ready for the Christmas sledge race. We used to walk up with them on top of the mountains, that normally took you at least more than 1 hr. But then once on top, you were excited in getting ready for the race down the valley. On one sledge usually sit 10 people two in front who control the sledge when coming in a curve, the rest has to balance to prevent falling down. Since you don't have that much light, 4 torchs fixed on the sledge help to see where you're headed to. This is a special Christmas, surrounded by clear sky, cold temp, ad this wonderful snow, which looks like crystals in the light. By the time you're back in the village it's usually already 3 am so everybody gets a rest to start then the Christmas day. |
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