The roots of Christmas fairs can be found in Austria and Germany and reach all the way back to 1296 when Duke Albrecht I authorized an Advent Fair in the month of December in Vienna.  

Many towns and cities in that part of Europe vie for the title of the first Christmas Fair but the tradition really picked up in the early 1500s.  The fact that our church Christmas Fair is at the earliest part of Advent is actually in keeping with those early fairs.  

Why were they first held in the early part of December?  Well, because the tradition of giving gifts to children was locked into December 6^th, the Feast of Saint Nicolas, people would buy these gifts at Christmas fairs.  Christmas itself was reserved as a very somber religious day to be observed with fasting and penitence.  It took Martin Luther and his opposition to the veneration of Saints before gift-giving moved to Christmas Day itself.  Christmas Fairs, then, moved closer to this date as well.

Our forebears, the Puritans, didn’t like any of this.  They shunned Christmas as a whole not least because they felt it was too celebratory.  This feeling was shared by a good number of the English citizenry such that in, 1643, Parliament passed an ordinance which noted, in part, that “this feast, pretending the memory of Christ, has become an extreme forgetfulness of him, by giving liberty to carnal and sensual delights.”  Well, there’s a new angle on Christmas!  Sounds like the headline was “Christmas 1643: When things got out of hand!” 

Fast forward to the 1920s and Christmas Fairs went into steep decline due to the birth of department stores.  Oddly, they spiked dramatically in popularity in 1930s Nazi Germany with millions attending Christmas fairs that were “Christmas” in name only because they lacked any religious hallmarks.  Gifts, decorations, food, trees, etc. were marketed instead in order to highlight the “Arian origins” of long-standing traditions.

Apart from Germany in the 1930s, Christmas Fairs have always been located at or near churches to emphasize the faith aspect of these events.  

Today, Christmas Fairs like ours are seeing a resurgence as part of people’s desire to avoid department stores and Amazon as well as wanting that “small town, community feel” that is so important.  

There is something nostalgic about Christmas Fairs.  Even in the late 1700s people were harkening back to Christmas Fairs centuries earlier.  One author wrote this description, in 1797, of what was, to him, a past Golden Age of Christmas Fairs:

“Most splendid were the evening hours, when the wide street was illuminated by many thousands of lights from the booths and thousands strolled along, jovial with plans to buy, telling stories, laughing, crying out loud across the sweet aromas of the various sugar and marzipan pastries, those fruits, in alluring imitation, figures of all kinds, animals and people, all shining with bright colors, which smiled out at the eager onlookers.”

Our Fair, then, is part of a wonderful legacy of celebration, community building, and faith formation.  We hope to see you this weekend!

See you in church,

–Rev. Dominic