You realise there are only 178 sleeps to Christmas – when that jolly, fat gentleman dressed in red comes squeezing down the chimney? Of course you do. Well, at least the Wohlfahrt household in Bavaria does.
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The family owns the only company in the world that sells Christmas gifts all year round, so it knows everything about Yuletide. It has its headquarters at the quaint Käthe Wohlfahrt shop in the town of Rothenburg ob der Tauber. Translation – red town over the Tauber River.
You will find it on the Romantischer Strasse (Romantic Road), which stretches from Würtzburg on the River Main to Füssen on the Swiss border. Füssen is where Mad King Leopold’s Neuschwanstein castle is located. You know the one Disneyland’s castle in Anaheim, California is modelled on it.
The family business had its origins half a century ago when an American NATO officer and his wife visited the Wilhelm and Käthe Wohlfahrt for Christmas. They were fascinated by the couple’s heirloom music box.
Wilhelm decided a music box would be a wonderful gift for the Americans. But, by the time he went searching, all the shops had sold out of their Christmas goods. Eventually he found a wholesaler who would sell a minimum of 10 music boxes. The Wohlfahts went door-to-door in the American compound to sell the other nine but were thwarted by the US military police.
As fate would have it, the MPs adored the music boxes and suggested the German couple sell them at a charity fete run by the US officers’ wives. This was so successful that almost overnight a new business in German Christmas handicraft had sprung up – Käthe Wohlfahrt’s Christkindlmarkt.
Today at the Rothenburg ob der Tauber store there are more than 30,000 traditional Christmas decorations for sale – pyramids, nutcrackers, incense burners, nativity sculptures, Schwibbogen (Saxony candle holders) and ornaments. In the doorway “guarding” the Christkindlmarkt is a giant nutcracker soldier dubbed Christian I. In December alone, thousands of tourists pose for photos next to it.
Inside the store is a pretty village with snow-covered houses, thousands of twinkling stars and winding, cobblestone streets. Dominating the display is a 5 metre revolving white Christmas tree with more than 1000 glass balls, surrounded by 122,000 artificial flashing lights.
By the way, Santa hasn’t passed by the Wohlfahrt family in this digital age. The company does a roaring trade from travellers who return to their homes in far-flung corners of the globe. They click the computer mouse with a credit card at hand and order away.
