Spekulatius: a spiced biscuit with, frankly, nothing particularly recommending it.Hard Impossible to avoid if visiting an Austrian family during Advent Weihnachtskekse: Christmas biscuits, of which an unending variety magically appear in December.Or, if you live in an Anglo-Austrian household like mine, you celebrate Christmas all over again the UK way: more food, more drink, more forced expressions of gratitude for entirely inappropriate gifts, and, particularly, more complaints about the scarcity of the purple chocolates in a tin of Quality Street. Many people then use Christmas Day ( Weihnachtstag) to visit other parts of the family or recover from overindulgence the evening before. Late afternoon or early evening on the 24th then sees the family gather for the Christmas festivities, including carol singing, a hearty meal (see below), and the exchange of gifts and well wishes. Especially since modern kids with Internet access are less easily convinced by tales of Christmas magic. Inevitably, commercial interests have pecked away at the influence of the retailer-unfriendly Christkind, and pushed for more sleighs and Santa you can read up on that battle here.Ī growing tendency is also to put the tree up earlier. When the bell rings, the kids enter the room and marvel at the magical transformation. The Christkind is the gift bringer: a manifestation of Jesus as a child or an angel, often represented with golden locks and the obligatory wings. When all is ready, someone rings a tinkly bell which announces that the Christkind has been. Sometime in the afternoon of December 24th, a handy relative or friend (grandparents are particularly useful here) distracts the kids while the parent(s) decorate the Christmas tree. But the big moment of celebration definitely remains Christmas Eve ( Heiligenabend).Ī “traditional” Christmas for a Viennese family might look like this: Ice skatingĪs Vienna becomes even more multicultural, it’s tricky to talk about pervasive Christmas traditions. The Open House Theatre production has various dates in December. I don’t list individual theatrical productions (only one of me and way too many of them), but…an English-language performance of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens seems too good to ignore. Finally, the Heidi Horten collection brings out the big guns of modern art with its highlights exhibition: WE LOVE.And Upper Belvedere has the privately-owned Klimt painting Adele Bloch-Bauer II on special display Lower Belvedere presents the art of Louise Bourgeois with a juxtaposition of her early paintings with later works to illustrate the common themes.The Bank Austria Kunstforum Wien takes us into the modern era with a retrospective for Robert Motherwell.
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