By Tara V. Kohlenberg —

Most families have holiday traditions, no matter the holiday we celebrate. Traditions are the rituals that connect us to our history, celebrating the generations that came before us. German Christmas cookies are the tradition that connects me to my German roots.

One of my most treasured possessions is an old, stained and smeared spiral notebook with recipes in the hand of my Oma. Safely zipped into a large freezer bag to protect its fragile pages, it lives in my cabinet wedged in between a plethora of other cookbooks.

This book is a treasure to me because, as a child, I never saw it. I did not bake Christmas cookies with my Oma. I sometimes saw her make bread or my favorite buttermilk cookies, but most of the “a pinch of this and handful of that” type of recipes were hidden deep in her head. It was like magic to me.

My grandparents lived in a Victorian house with a dining room located in the very center. Children were not allowed in the dining room after Thanksgiving Day. Cookies baked for Christmas were stored in there. The dining room had four entrances. Every door remained closed and closely monitored. Getting caught sneaking in there would definitely rate “a stick” from St. Nikolaus! Once, when I was maybe eleven, my Oma had her hands in dish water. She sent me into the darkened dining room to retrieve a dish from the corner china cupboard with a stern warning (in German), “Keep your eyes straight on the cabinet, get it and come quickly out. Don’t stop, don’t look around.”

I remember the heavenly aroma of cinnamon, cardamom and anise in the cool dark room. I certainly did not dawdle, but I still could not help seeing all the jars of different sizes and different colors, filled with fruit cookies, molasses cookies, Pfeffernüsse, Springerle and more. Turns out, storing those cookies for a couple of weeks before Christmas allowed the spice and fruit flavors to deepen and, in some cases, the cookies to soften.

Our wonderful Christmas cookie customs originated from desserts served with pagan winter solstice celebration feasts. When Christian beliefs spread over Europe throughout the Middle Ages (5th through 14th centuries), many of the old feast traditions remained, including decadent desserts.

The spice trade of the 15th century brought about increased availability of spices for food flavoring and medicines, but spices (pepper, ginger, cloves, nutmeg, cardamon, cinnamon, anise, and cloves) were expensive. Dried fruits, apricots and dates were also considered prized ingredients, as were lard, butter and sugar. Families could only afford such extravagance on the most important holidays — Christmas or Easter. Small baked spiced treats like cookies were more affordable as gifts for friends and neighbors than cakes or pies.

We have come a long way since medieval times, but some things have not changed. Many of our treasured German Christmas cookie recipes are still heavily spiced with “traditional” Christmas flavors like cinnamon, nutmeg, cardamon, anise and ginger.

My favorite Christmas cookie recipe from Oma’s brown spiral notebook is for Springerle. These anise flavored cookies, from the German province of Swabia, were originally made to honor church holy days. They were sometimes used as Christmas tree ornaments.

The cookies are rolled out with specially carved rolling pins or pressed into molds to imprint the cookie dough.  Then the cookies are cut apart and left to dry over night to preserve the impression. When baked, the underside of the cookie rises to a soft center, leaving a crisp imprint on the top. My Oma never used a Springerle rolling pin. She just rolled them out flat before letting them dry. They were still great!

You might ask what anise tastes like. Anise, either seeds or oil, give Springerle a strong taste of licorice. Recipes for Springerle vary slightly from one another, some using orange flavoring instead. Here is my grandmother’s recipe. You can make some for yourself.

Springerle

• 1 C. Sugar
• 4 Eggs, beaten to a froth
• 1 tsp. Anise oil
• 4½ C. Flour
• 4½ tsp. Baking powder
• ¼ tsp. Lemon rind

Cream sugar and egg mixture. Add other ingredients gradually. Roll out ¼ inch thick on floured board. Roll with patterned rolling pin if desired. Let dry and harden in cold room overnight. Cut apart squares and bake at 250°F. Do not brown. Cookies will be white.

Another of my favorite cookie recipes is Pfeffernüsse, which literally translates as Pepper Nuts, because, well – they contain pepper.

Pfeffernusse

• 2½ C. Flour
• ½ tsp. Cloves
• ½ tsp. Nutmeg
• ½ tsp. Cinnamon
• ¼ tsp. Ginger
• ¼ tsp. Pepper
• ¼ tsp. Cardamon
• 2 Eggs
• 1 C. Dark brown sugar (packed)
• ⅓ C. Pecans (chopped)

Sift flour and spices together. In separate bowl, mix the eggs and sugar together with rotary beater until smooth. Mix all of the other ingredients in to make a stiff (and sticky) dough. With wet hands, roll into balls and place on greased cookie sheet. Bake at 375°F for 12-15 minutes. Roll in powdered sugar if desired. (I know that there are Pfeffernüsse recipes that have a sugar glaze instead of powdered sugar, but this is the way my Oma made them).

Many of the original German recipes called for walnuts, almonds or hazelnuts. Yet, you will see the recipes lovingly handed down through the generations here in New Braunfels call for pecans. The German immigrants in Texas, being the resourceful people that they were, substituted locally found pecans in their recipes. Pecans bear fruit in the fall, making them the perfect substitution.

Christmas cookies were very special and definitely a gift of love. Yes, ingredients were costly, but cookies were also quite a chore to make. No tubes of store-bought cookie dough for them! My Oma did not have an electric stand mixer, just the rotary hand kind. Other than the frothing of eggs, everything was mixed by hand with a whisk or spoon. Even meringue was beaten by hand. Boy, you talk about upper body strength! If you have ever gotten tired making more than one batch of cookies in one day with an electric mixer, think about how tiring it is to make one batch totally by hand. They made several batches of different kinds throughout the month of December. It was well worth it.

These recipes are only samples of the German baking tradition as they survive in the fifth, sixth or seventh generations of immigrant families here in New Braunfels. Make some up (or get some at Naegelin’s) and share the Love! Merry Christmas!

Sources: Sophienburg Museum and Archives; Recipe Collection, Wanda Voigt.

“Around the Sophienburg” is published every other weekend in the New Braunfels Herald-Zeitung.

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By Keva Hoffmann Boardman —

Christmas morning had finally come! Presents, wrapped in shiny red or green paper and topped with ribbon bows, were stacked beneath the Christmas tree. But first, I looked on the coffee table where the Mary and Joseph figures had been reverently kneeling, gazing with love at an empty manger for weeks. There He was, the tiny Baby Jesus, lying in the brown wood manger filled with moss. Our manger scene at home was never complete until Christmas day.

The 13th C. theologian St. Bonaventure credits St. Francis of Assisi with creating the Christmas tradition of a manger scene. In his biography, “Life of St. Francis,” Bonaventure tells us that Francis was inspired by the sight of the traditional place of Jesus’ birth when he visited the Holy Land. In 1223, St. Francis sought permission from Pope Honorius III to create something “for the kindling of devotion to the birth of Christ.” On that Christmas Eve in a rock niche near the town square of Grecio, Italy, St. Francis put together a scene of a live ox and donkey beside a hay-filled manger. “He preached to people around the Nativity of the poor King … the Babe of Bethlehem … a dear friend of this holy man affirmed that he beheld an Infant marvelously beautiful, sleeping in the manger, whom the blessed Father Francis embraced with both his arms, as if he would awake Him from sleep.” The vision wasn’t the only miracle that night. “The hay of that manger, being preserved by the people, was wondrously found to cure all diseases of cattle and many other pestilences.”

After such a beginning, the inclusion of a nativity scene quickly became part of Christian Christmas tradition. In 1291, Pope Nicholas IV decreed that a permanent nativity scene be erected at Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome. Attributed to the sculptor Arnolfo di Cambio, the marble figures are believed to be the oldest nativity in Italy. By the end of the 14th C., almost every church in Italy included either live or statue/figurine manger scenes in their Christmas services.

Living nativities fit well into the tradition of pantomimes and mystery plays which were popular in the Middle ages. Renaissance art was dominated with the subject of the Nativity, artists and sculptors telling and retelling the story in unique and beautiful ways. Wealthy patrons even had themselves inserted into the Nativity story. The manger scene was often expanded to include the little town of Bethlehem and the countryside.

Manger scenes are not really historically accurate. They usually incorporate the shepherds and the three Magi along with sheep, donkeys, oxen, and camels. Our manger scene at home has come to include exotic animals like antelope and swans, and a cheetah walks next to the camels. The story of Christ’s birth varies in its telling in the Gospels of the Bible. All are combined in our manger scenes, this adjustment to the timeline simply allowing us to have the whole dramatic and beautiful story gathered together in one place.

The tradition of the Nativity is uniquely kept all around the world in displays both live and static. In past years, Holy Family Catholic Church celebrated the festival of Los Posadas, a tradition in Spanish-speaking countries. This reenactment of Mary and Joseph’s search for a room took the Nativity to the streets of New Braunfels in a lovely candle-lit walking drama. Many other local churches have manger scenes set up on their front lawns. I remember being a shepherd for a night in the living Nativity at First Protestant Church when I was in Jr. High. And we cannot forget the many Christmas pageants, with school children acting the parts of both humans and beasts.

The seven Timmerman Sisters of Geronimo (just up Hwy. 123 towards Seguin) were well-known for their family’s nativity scene. In 1936, Mrs. William Timmermann found a description in Hermann Seele’s Die Cypress, of the 1849 Christmas celebration at her grandparents’ home, the Waissenhaus (the orphanage out near Gruene). Seele described seeing a manger scene set within a circle of honeycomb limestone rocks beneath a native cedar Christmas tree. Mrs. Timmermann, the seven sisters’ mother, then reestablished this tradition of her grandparents by setting up a manger scene surrounded by honeycomb rocks beneath the Timmermann Christmas tree. The scene grew to include a miniature Waissenhaus, a waterfall and other little vignettes which were nestled within an ever-growing ring of honeycomb limestone rocks.

Special figures for the orphanage were created in Germany after WWII. A copy of Seele’s story was sent to a West German friend. Disguising herself as an old woman gathering seeds, she made her way to a home in East Germany and placed a note under a rock which described the children and adult figures needed for the scene. The friend then arranged to return and pick up the finished pieces which she sent to the Timmermanns in Texas. The completed Waisenhaus scene appeared under the Timmermann tree in 1949 — on the hundredth anniversary of the Christmas described by Hermann Seele.

Many of us remember visiting the Timmermann Sisters at Christmas to marvel at their manger scene. Surrounded by honeycomb rocks, the Nativity and Texas Hill Country scenes spilled out from under the wide-spreading branches of the Texas cedar tree quite nearly filling the entire room. For many years, the scene was also created at the Heritage Exhibit which was put on at the NB Civic Center during Wurstfest.

Of course, depending on where you are from, a manger scene has a different name. In Spanish-speaking countries it is known as belén which is literally “Bethlehem.” Churches and cathedrals have elaborate scenes which include the manger, the city, and the countryside. German-speakers call the manger scene a Weihnachtskrippe or “Christmas crib.” While the French call it a crèche, the Italians call it a presepio, but both mean a “crib.”

All these names reflect the most important part of Christmas — the Baby Jesus in the manger on Christmas morning.

Sources: San Marcos Daily Record, Austin American Statesman, New Braunfels Herald-Zeitung, Texas Library Journal Vol 29 No. 4 – Sophienburg Museum & Archives; https://www.google.com/search?q=history+of+nativity+scenes; https://theconversation.com/how-st-francis-created-the-nativity-scene-with-a-miraculous-event-in-1223-124742; https://catholicstraightanswers.com/what-is-the-origin-of-the-nativity-scene-creche/

Photo: The Timmermann Christmas tree and nativity scene in 1948. The Waissenhaus is on the left. (S481-014_3)

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