Out with the old

1^st January 2017 must be the most eagerly-awaited date in a long time. Getting this year and its awfulness over with will feel like a purification ritual, and I have a feeling that tonight’s festivities will be even crazier than usual. I’m not going to reflect on the year here, as I don’t want to dwell on the horrors. Instead, I’m going to offer my observations on some of the traditions associated with New Year’s Eve – Silvester – here in Germany.

The days between Christmas and New Year are strange in Berlin.  A good percentage of non-natives have disappeared to spend the holiday in their home towns or countries, leaving the capital eerily deserted, with many businesses closed for the duration.  During these Marie Celeste days, dedicated firework shops open up enabling people to take advantage of the brief buying window, which they do in no small measure.  For a couple of days, fireworks explode sporadically around the city, then the momentum gathers until, from about 6.00 p.m. on New Year’s Eve, the skies resound with non-stop booms and bangs, and even the more sedate neighbourhoods come to resemble war zones.  As I write this, the lovely sounds of the Berlin Philharmonic’s Silvester Concert on TV are doing battle with the riotous noise outside.  Health and safety considerations will by now have gone out of the window as fireworks are let off in the streets and hofs, often by kids. 

A slightly less dangerous New Year’s Eve pastime is doughnut eating.  All day the bakeries display row upon row of them, iced in various colours, which people buy by the boxful to take to parties.  Sometimes, in the preparation of a batch, one or two are filled with mustard instead of jam, resulting in a sweet-batter Russian roulette.

Whilst the bakeries have their seasonal work cut out with doughnut making, the florists too have a New Year speciality in the Schornsteinfeger (chimney sweep).  Replacing the festive fir, candle and bauble arrangements that have filled the shelves for weeks, are pots of clover complete with chimney sweep and ladder (and sometimes pig).  Chimney sweeps are lucky symbols in Germany so the figures are given to wish good fortune on friends and family in the coming year.

                               Some of the clover, chimney sweep and pig arrangements available

Bleigiessen, the practice of melting lead for divination purposes, is a long-standing custom, performed just after midnight.  Small chunks of lead are melted in a spoon over a candle flame and then dropped into cold water to re-harden.  Participants then try to determine what shapes the hardened lead has assumed and to analyse their possible meanings as predictions for the year ahead. 

On a less arcane note is the obsession with ‘Dinner for One’, a twenty-minute black and white British comedy sketch from 1963.  The film, about an elderly lady called Miss Sophie and her butler James, is televised about a dozen times over the course of the day and evening.  In the film, Miss Sophie is having a birthday party despite the fact that none of her invited guests are at the table with her.  The butler takes their places, adopting their voices, drinking their drinks and becoming increasingly inebriated as the sketch progresses towards a saucy ending which exploits its recurring line.  It’s difficult to understand the fascination with ‘Dinner for One’ but it’s an enduring New Year’s Eve institution in Germany. To see the film, follow the link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lzQxjGL9S0

So, whether you’re spending the evening melting lead, eating mustard-filled doughnuts or playing with explosives, I hope you get through it in one piece and wish you ‘einen guten Rutsch’ (a ‘good slide’ into the new year)!