Forest Christmas
Forest Christmas are special celebrations during the Christmas season . These are devotions and worship celebrations, but also winter performances without Christian reference that are held in the forest or in other places in the open air.
history
The Christmas in the woods goes back to romantic ideas and efforts of the churches at the beginning of the 20th century to bring the Gospel closer to people in new ways and in unusual places. In many Christmas stories and legends , romantic situations are used as a rhetorical stylistic device . An important role is played by the fact that since ancient times the Christmas story has been set in a stable with an ox and a donkey . Writers of the 19th and 20th centuries such as Selma Lagerlöf , Astrid Lindgren , Theodor Storm , Dietrich Steinwede , Karl Heinrich Waggerl , Peter Rosegger , Agnes Günther and others have taken up this tradition and created corresponding stories, which by depicting a gloomy but homely one Arouse romantic feelings. In the Inner Mission , among others in the Christian labor movement, these ideas were taken up and since the 1920s "forest Christmas celebrations" have been held, often in connection with campfire romance and with the participation of trumpet choirs . Erich Kloss , Karl Eichler , Ernst Decker , Karl Schworm and others stand out particularly during this period.
After the Second World War, forest Christmas celebrations became a permanent fixture in many communities. Also anthroposophy and educational reform movements took up the matter with pleasure. Since National Socialism , GDR church politics and progressive secularization , Christmas events in the forest have often been completely emptied of the content of the birth of Jesus.
literature
- Karl Eichler: Christmas in the woods. Workers Youth Publishing House, Berlin 1924.
- Ernst Decker: Forest Christmas: 3 Christmas stories from the Westerwalde. Sonnenweg publishing house, Berlin 1929.
- Agnes Günther: Forest Christmas. (from Agnes Günther: The saint and her fool. )
- Karl Schworm: Christmas in the forest: Palatinate stories. NSZ-Verlag, Neustadt an der Haardt 1934.
- Daniela Drescher (Ill.): Forest Christmas. Urachhaus-Verlag, Stuttgart 2016, DNB 1099452635 .
- Karl Enderle, Alfred Hofstätter (Ill.): Design your own forest Christmas: People and animals on the way to the crib. Echter-Verlag, Würzburg 2010, ISBN 978-3-429-03290-6 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ The Queen of the Night asks for a dance , MOZ.de , November 27, 2016