American ingenuity led to the cherished tradition of the Christmas pickle.
This is part three of the “Twelve Posts of Christmas,” a series exploring twelve traditions of the Christmas season.
On the first day of Christmas my mother always hides a pickle in our pine tree. Do not fear — the beloved object is not actually a cucumber soaked in pickling juices, but a glass ornament crafted to resemble a whole Kosher dill. The tradition began in my family well before I was born, so, like all the best traditions, it began some time ago — the exact date and hour obscured from collective memory.
Each Christmas, to kick off the opening of gifts, the kids in the family scramble to find the pickle first. (To be clear, I am currently the youngest “kid” in the family, but I can promise you all of the 20-something “kids” gathered took the search very seriously.) This year, to my great chagrin, my sister beat me to the chase. In our household, the pickle-finder opens the first present and retains bragging rights — the most enviable prize — for the year, until the next pickle excursion begins.
Over the years, family members have tossed out different origin stories of the Great Pickle Search, but such explanations have been mere imagined potentialities rather than factual findings. As my family on both sides can be traced back to a mid 19th-century wave of German immigration to the Upper Midwest, we generally assumed the practice was of German origin. And with good reason — the ceremonial vegetable has a formal German name, “Weihnachtsgurke” (“Christmas pickle”). The named evoked a family in 19th-century Bavaria, trimming the tree by the hearth, with a fresh-baked Linzer torte set on the table.
As it turns out, the Weihnachtsgurke is a distinctly American myth. In true, patriotic fashion, the story of the traditional German gherkin appears to have been fabricated by resourceful salesmen of America’s first retail behemoth — F. W. Woolworth Company. Woolworth’s was the first large company to import German glass ornaments to the United States in 1890, and they had to sell them somehow. The retailer’s tale of the Weihnachtsgurke was not too far from the truth — Germans had been making glass ornaments since the mid19th century. Undoubtedly, German immigrants to the Midwest brought the general knowledge of such glass ornaments along with them.
While the historical record evades certainty on the subject of Christmas tree pickles, current data assuredly show that actual Germans are vastly unfamiliar with the tradition. The German polling agency, YouGov, surveyed 2,057 Germans in 2016 and found that 91 percent had never heard of the custom. Of the 9 percent who knew of the tradition, only 2 percent actually hung a pickle in the boughs of their Christmas tree. If anything, German families who celebrate the tradition brought the supposedly German practice to their country from the U.S.
So, American ingenuity led to the cherished tradition of the Christmas pickle — a case of Christmas consumerism in which I have no shame taking part. My shame only comes from my latest defeat . . . until next year, Weihnachtsgurke!