The Lebkuchen Came!

On Monday I was sitting at the computer, working away, when I heard a knock at the door. I figured it must be the last Christmas present I'd ordered arrived, but when the FedEx lady handed over the box, it looked a little big for what I was expecting. I flipped over the box and found a pleasant surprise: lebkuchen from Paula over at Love is a Journey had arrived!

Lebkuchen is a traditional gingerbread-like cookie baked at Christmas time in Germany. When I opened the box, I found an assortment of charmingly packaged lebkuchen of all different shapes and size, which I tucked under the Christmas tree. 

"Hey what's this?" Andy asked, spying the assortment of goodies beneath the tree when he got home from work. He opened of the boxes. "Oh my gosh, did you see these?" he asked, his eyes growing wide. "HUGE chocolate cookies!"

Everything is so beautifully packaged that I'm hesitant to open anything. We are nibbling our way through the package of HUGE chocolate cookies and I have to admit that the package of Butterzeug (butter cookies) are nearly gone. (Hey, I like my butter.) I love holiday traditions, and I'm thrilled to be incorporating German Christmas traditions into Christmas 2010 at the cabin.

The closest I've ever come to being in Germany at Christmas is switching planes in Munich for a J-term trip to Italy back in 2006/07. But this isn't my first brush with lebkuchen. Back in high school, I worked on an online teen e-zine and one of my fellow editors lived in Germany. One Christmas, she sent all of the e-zine editors an assortment of German Christmas candies and included a small lebucken ornament in the parcel. There's been a piece of plasticized lebkuchen hanging on my Christmas trees for years!

While studying in Ireland in 2005, I had a chance to visit my fellow editor and experience Germany for a long weekend. Although this picture of snowy Heidelberg in the Rhine Valley was taken in March, this how I imagine a German Christmas: all snowy castles, brightly lit storefronts, lebkuchen and mulled wine. 

Thank you Paula for a taste of German Christmas. That first sweet bite of lebkuchen brought back equally sweet memories of Christmases and travels gone by.