I grew up in Germany, actually in Bavaria, in a little village not too far away from Munich. Back then, Bavaria was a quiet county in the south of Germany bordering with the Alps, consisting mainly of farming communities and a few bigger towns, Munich being the capital. Many traditionally pagan festivals were converted into Catholic holidays, the Church added their own and to this day there are 16 public holidays in Bavaria, but strangely enough, no public holiday for Thanksgiving.
Thanksgiving is called “Erntedankfest” in Bavaria which means literally “harvest thanks festival” and it took place generally on the first Sunday in October. We kids made beautiful baskets with as many agricultural produce as was available, which for my brother and myself meant that we had to visit a local farm and ask for apples, potatoes, a bunch of grains and whatever else they would give us. We then decorated the basket with autumn flowers and colorful autumn leaves and at times we added a small loaf of bread or freshly baked soft pretzles to the creation.
Thanksgiving Sunday in the morning, I would put on my white First Communion dress, my brother his dark suit. Mom and Dad were also dressed in their Sunday best and Dad would drive us to a place near the church where we would all line up with our baskets, little girls first, then the boys, then the older kids, then the adults, ready to walk behind the village marching band for about half a mile passing right through the center of the village and on to the church.
Our church had a very impressive, new organ and as we neared the entrance to the church, the marching band stopped playing and the voluminous sounds of the church organ greeted us and we walked in to bring the baskets forward to the altar and then took our places.
Mass started and we would sing the beautiful old church songs, my favorite ones always giving me goose pimples. Somehow they don’t do such music anymore these days and I miss it. With all our heart we would give thanks for the harvest, remembering the thunderstorms that destroyed the wheat fields the year before. Yes, we really meant our prayers and thanked God from the bottom of our hearts for this year’s beautiful harvest.
After mass we would go home and have our Erntedankfest-Meal. Usually goose with potato dumpling and blue cabbage, all home-cooked, simply delicious! And even we kids were allowed a glass of the sweet, black-brown beer that is brewed in Bavaria to this very day.
In the afternoon we would go for a walk in the fields, plucking autumn flowers, rosehips or hawthornberries and colorful leaves to make them into beautiful posies and the left over leaves were pressed into a notebook with the name of the tree written underneath.
There is a bit more information on the protestant Erntedankfest celebrations in this article:
http://german.about.com/cs/culture/a/erntedankf.htm (in English and German)
by Antje Cobbett
Remote Writer
http://whatdoesaremotewriterdo.blogspot.com