Salzburg does Christmas markets better than anywhere I've seen. The warm glow of the booths selling hand-crafted ornaments, the jaw-dropping, jaw-killing array of sweets, the ever-present brass quartet, the gentle snow that seems to know to begin falling as soon as you enter the market, and the smell of the chestnuts and the Glühwein (a hot spiced wine that soothes a sore throat like nothing else)—it puts us all in a warm, nostalgic haze. And so the euros slip from our pockets, booth after booth, like angels ascending to heaven.
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The children are all old enough to want to gift one another for Christmas, and so everyone is hiding gifts from everyone else. Cracks are appearing in the disguise, though, like when a giver is caught reading the book he/she had meant as a present—often by the recipient. Or like poor Cornelia, who knit adorable caps and vests for Bettina's stuffed mice. Cornelia had meant them as a present and hidden them accordingly, but a nosey Bettina discovered them in the drawer—twice. After the second discovery, Cornelia gave up and just handed them to her.
There is a larger disappointment, though. In a country as Catholic as this and with a history so interwoven with that of the Church, I'd been expecting a feistier resistance to the commercial monolith. But here as in North America, the dominance of secular Christmas is thorough and unquestioned. Jesus has been relegated to Sunday mornings, when the pastor reminds us yet again that He is the reason for the season.
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