Dreikönigstag
Today is Epiphany – the day the three kings visited baby Jesus. Here we celebrate Dreikönigstag by eating Dreikönigskuchen – literally three kings cake – sweet bread covered with sugar and almonds. One of those little balls around the edge always contains the king ( a little plastic man). Somehow it seems my husband always wins and gets to wear the golden crown that comes in the bag with the Dreikönigskuchen from the bakery. I guess that means he’s king for the day. Secretly I think he checks in advance to see where that little guy could have been pushed in…that’s my theory anyway. Next year I plan to bake my own…but that will be another story….
Last night the local kids were out celebrating too. Dressed as kings and carrying stars they rang the bell of every home in town and sang carols and collected money for a good cause. A little band of happy excited faces out in the freezing cold. It’s a lovely tradition and sure knocks the socks off halloween in my book. It must be a mountain tradition – and I suspect also one mainly practiced in Catholic Cantons. We certainly never see anything like this in the lowlands.
happy Dreikönigstag!
Helen
January 7th, 2011 at 12:08 pm
Groan – my husband also got the king in his first part of the bread!! He had the grace to be slightly embarrassed, he’s born lucky ;o. Luckily, they had a giant Dreikönigskuchen at school and Caitlin got to be king, too… 😉
Interesting – I’ve not heard of Sternsänger here in Switzerland much (you’re probably right about Catholic cantons), more in Bavaria. In the village, it was always the cowbells and pot-banging on the morning of Dec. 31st that used to wake us up! Later it was worse, when they smeared mayonnaise and eggs all over the front door and threw eggs at the house if you didn’t leave a bag of sweets out… ugh. And one time we searched the whole village for our doormat, finally locating it in the stream. None of that here in town, funnily enough.
January 7th, 2011 at 3:13 pm
Here we have the king cake tradition at Mardi Gras time. And it’s a little baby that’s baked into the cake. I’ll be it all comes from the same tradition though.