One thing I love about living in a different country is getting to explore and participate in cultural traditions which are so very different to my own. And believe me, we experienced on this evening!
November 11th is St. Martin's Day, also called Martinmas in German. It is the feast day of St. Martin of Tours, a Roman soldier who died in 397AD. His claim to fame, if you will, was cutting his cloak in half and giving part to a beggar who didn't have anything to wear then later having a vision that Jesus was wearing the half-cloak.
Fast forward a few years and St. Martin's Day is considered the start of the winter celebration season. To bring in the season, children decorate lanterns and have processionals around town singing songs of the season. Charlotte's school put on a mini show / concert complete with lanterns and a parade.
They started with a little history of St. Martin (in German & English). Charlotte has been working so hard on her German lessons this year and her German teacher let her have one of the German speaking parts - one of the few non-native speakers to have German part. I was so proud of her bravery for trying! And if you don't catch it at the beginning of the clip, she says "Liebe Schüler, liebe Eltern, liebe Lehrer" which means, "Dear students, Dear parents, Dear teachers". I didn't say it was a large speaking part 😆
I tried to capture a few of the songs, all of which are in German. The first is "Laterne, Laterne". You can see the words in German & English here.
This next one is called "Lichterkinder" which translates to Children of Lights. Fitting for a lantern parade. I couldn't find an English translated version ready to go on this one, so here is the German words and you can throw them into Google Translate as necessary 😊
Finally we paraded around the neighborhoods by the school with their lanterns. They were supposed to be singing, but who knows what was really going on!
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