Another nine and a half weeks, then Christmas Eve: In the Bavarian festival town of Bayreuth the earliest Christmas market in Germany has been opened according to its operators. At 14 degrees visitors of the "Winter Village" can now sip mulled wine, nibble roasted almonds and listen to Christmas music.
It was "once again the first Christmas meeting in Germany and certainly in Europe," it said in a statement from the organizers. Already last year, the "Winter Village" was opened in mid-October - and thus well before the beginning of the Advent season.
Some visitors came at the invitation of the operators in swimsuit and swimming trunks for the opening, on the Christmas market is a mobile sauna.
The fact that the Christmas markets open earlier and earlier, comes with church representatives to criticism. The markets are now primarily a marketing tool to lure people into the city, criticized the diocese of Essen last year. Christmas is not just a cultural celebration of light at the end of the year, but the feast of the birth of Jesus.
