Back Roads

This week’s Back Roads is the work of The Land Managing Editor Paul Malchow. Father Christmas, Christkind and the Krampus

Black Friday is red, green and gold in Excelsior, Minn.

E x c e l s i o r Christkindlsmarkt kicks off the holiday shopping season in grand style with parades, music and an open-air Christmas market on Thanksgiving weekend and the first weekend in December. Shops and businesses downtown are decorated and patrons line the street for the grande parade.

Although the festival backdrop is Excelsior Bay of Lake Minnetonka and not the Alps, Christkindlsmarkt carries a definite Bavarian feel with Christmas traditions such as German sausages and potatoes, strudel and “Gluehwein’’ (a warm, sweet, spiced wine).

The market features a variety of stalls filled with handcrafted ornaments, wooden toys, vintage pieces, Alpaca knitwear and original art.

A family affair, Christkindlsmarkt boasts a North Pole Trolley, Father Christmas, live reindeer and tea parties with Frozen Princesses. Patrolling the grounds are the angelic Christkind and the foreboding Krampus.

Christkind is a German Christmas figure adorned with golden hair, angel wings, and a crown. She is the traditional Christmas gift-bringer in multiple European countries and opened Excelsior Christkindlsmarkt Friday morning with a proclamation. Krampus is a creature larger than a man. Covered in fur, Krampus has large exotic horns (sometimes as many as four or six), and hunts the mountain passes in the eastern alpine realm (in modern-day Austria). In the Salzburger history, Krampus was part of pre-Christian traditions and represented the harshness and wilderness of winter. Around 700 A.D. the creature was paired with Sankt Nikolaus. The tradition was outlawed by the Nazis; but in the 1960s, Krampus came back into popular culture.

Historically, Christkindlsmarkt is thought to have been established at Striezelmarkt in Dresden, Germany in 1434. Striezelmarkt was a one-day market to provide the citizens of Dresden with the

Excelsior, Minn.

meat for the Christmas meal after the pre-Christmas period of fasting. Over time, the Christkindlsmarkt festival spread throughout Europe. Eventually, every mid-size town had its own market. In 1995, it finally crossed the ocean to Daley Plaza in downtown Chicago. In 2005, an Excelsior resident visited the Chicago Christkindlmarket and suggested it to a committee of local business owners and residents.

Excelsior Christkindlsmarkt, a completely volunteer and donation driven 501(c)(3) nonprofit, manages and coordinates the festival to this day. v