In the Christkindlesmarkt — the Christmas market — in Nuremberg at about this time of year you will see an astonishingly large array of Christmas decorations. The market stalls are full of them — carved ones, tinselly ones, glittery ones, some woven out of straw — those stalls, that is, which are not selling sausages, spiced biscuits and specially rich varieties of seasonal cake. English Christmas, as everyone knows, was imported by Prince Albert. When you visit, say, Nuremberg or Bamberg at this time of year, you feel you’ve traced it to its source.
It’s a festival with roots deep in the art of the North. The spirit of Christmas, even the spirit of the Christmas decoration, seems to fill much of the art and architecture of central Europe. The mediaeval churches of the area are exuberant in the organic wildness of their carving and their structures.
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