German Christmas carols: O you painful

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There is this phenomenon that you rarely question things you know from an early age. If you are German and your family sings German Christmas carols at Christmas, you may be so familiar with the lyrics to these songs that you never really thought about them. No thing, you have me.

Christmas is actually a festival where a birth is celebrated. A birth under mysterious circumstances, admittedly - immaculate conception, all very mysterious - but that shouldn't matter now. What is celebrated is that Jesus was born. His arrival to people, the beginning of something great: joy, hope, salvation. The funny thing about German Christmas carols is that many of them are not so much celebrating birth, beginning and departure, but full of a longing for death.

"Longing for death" may sound hard, traditionally it is actually called "contemplation", but what do you think about? Rarely on the celebration of life. The Christmas spirit that blows through these songs is lonely, quiet and clean. Life is hard in principle, the thing with Jesus is very pleasant, but suffering, duty and order must not be forgotten.

"O you happy" may seem very positive at first glance, but there is also a small apocalypse hidden in it: "World was lost" - that does not have to be explained, that is the basic mood.

The angels as a kind of rest disturbance

The difference is most noticeable when you compare German songs with songs in other languages. That is a bit mean, of course, if, for example, you let "Maria walked through a 'Dornwald" compete against a "We wish you a merry christmas" or against "Przybiezeli do Betlejem pasterze". The English song is summarized: Merry Christmas, we want to eat pudding, immediately! The Polish: The baby is born, a miracle - the angels, animals, shepherds and kings are having a party! The German: Maria experiences a pain-free pregnancy and walks through a forest that has been dead for seven years.

But as I said, it's naughty to compare it like that, we don't do that. Instead, let's take a look at the most famous German-language Christmas carol: "Silent Night, Holy Night". I learned on Twitter that it was an Austrian song, but that shouldn't bother us. In terms of content, the following happens in the text: It is very quiet, the young small family is lonely in the puerperium. Visit is not. ( Everything is asleep, lonely wakes up / Only the married, most holy couple.) At least the baby laughs. In the last stanza the scenery becomes a little more dynamic ( through the angel Hallelujah / it sounds loud from far and near / Christ, the Savior is there) . It is interesting that the call of the angels is not described as happy or solemn, but only as "loud". The angels as a kind of rest disturbance. I don't judge, I'm just amazed.

Quiet is a central feature in German Christmas carols: "Quiet, quiet, quiet / because little child wants to sleep!" Or: "The snow trickles quietly", this text has become remarkably successful, for the fact that it is actually a standard property of snow, to make little noise when trickling, but the rule is: what is quiet is good. The first adjectives in this text are: "quiet", "still" and "rigid". Did I mention the longing for death? We see in nouns: some in nature (snow, lake, forest) and suffering (grief, harm, worry of life). The dark side is always present.

Where the good is mentioned, the bad must not be ignored. Also in "Born to Bethlehem": "O Kindelein, with all my heart / I want to love you very much / in joy and in pain". German yin and yang. In "Tomorrow, Santa Claus comes" the same thing is waited for "with pain" as if it were the only thing rhyming with "heart". (I would not find "candles" so un Christmasy now.)

As warm as house rules

Of course, there are also non-German Christmas carols that are about silence. The Polish "Lulajze, Jezuniu", for example, a lullaby. The first lines literally translate as follows: "Sleep well, little Jesus, my pearl, sleep well, my favorite piece of jewelry, sleep well ... And you, mother, comfort him when he cries." - In an official German translation, on the other hand, it says: "Lulei, my little Jesus, I want to weigh you so that all worries and fears go away." - In German the baby not only cries, it has "worries and fears" like any good citizen. The Polish version ends with the baby being told: sleep well, you most beautiful rose, loveliest lily, you gentle star, you most beautiful sun! The German version does not contain a single word of love and ends with: "We take care of your sleep and are very quiet." Love of parents, as warm as house rules. (After all, in "Heidischi Bumbeidschi" the child is completely alone - depending on the interpretation also dead - the mother has left "and is not coming back".)

Another important element of German Christmas carols is cleanliness. You may be thinking: what? But pay attention to it. As with many German Christmas carols, there are several versions of "Your little child is coming", depending on which song book you open. The second stanza goes in one of the versions like this: "O see in the crib in the nightly stable, / see here with the ray of light shining brightly / in clean diapers the heavenly child / much more beautiful and gentle than angels are." - In clean diapers! God's son is born and praised for being prettier than others and not peed in. Immaculate mother happiness with Maria!

Now one may object that these are all songs from past centuries, Biedermeier and so on, but funnily enough, even in Rolf Zuckowski's "In the Christmas Bakery" from 1987 there is the passage: "Are your fingers clean? / You pig."

A love that usually comes only from white asparagus

Also in "Tomorrow there will be something for children" cleanliness is a recurring element, we see a "cleaned crown hall" and "polished tin". No offense , I think that's very good, nothing against a clean house. In the last verse, there is also a warning to thank the parents for the care work, comparatively progressively: "Our good parents have been taking care of this for a long time. / Of course, whoever does not honor them / is not worth the joy . " A little strict, but good, Germany is perhaps also the only country in which in a popular Christmas carol the request "Don't let me freeze to death!" occurs. Combining fear of death and festivity - why not?

Of course, this should not mean that nothing beautiful happens in German Christmas carols. Sometimes it gets really romantic. "O Tannenbaum" is one of the best-known German Christmas carols and at the same time one of the few German folk songs in which someone is sung with love directly, not because of an impending separation, but simply because of joy and affection. Well, it is a tree that is sung, but gosh, forest has always been important to Germans, basically it is the epitome of German romanticism to confess love to a tree.

If you take a closer look at this love, it is an admiration that in Germany almost only belongs to white asparagus: "How faithful are your leaves", it says, there is talk of "permanence" - "your dress want to teach me something ". The loveliest German Christmas carol: a song in which someone compliments a plant. Traditionally sung around a tree that has been felled and will later dry up on the street. Death always celebrates. Happy Christmas everyone!