Every family has its own holiday tradition. Some people like Christmas dinner, for others gifts are more important. Or finding a pickle ornament among the branches of the Christmas tree. It sounds strange, but whoever finds a cucumber is lucky.
Legend has it that it is the last ornament Germans hang on their Christmas tree, a pickle made of shiny or frosted green glass. Cucumber hangs or hides somewhere deep among the branches of the Christmas tree. The child who finds it first will be lucky in the next year and get an extra gift.
Because there are supposed to be many poor families in the 19th century hung real cucumbers instead of decorations. Many of these families, who later moved to the USA, are this tradition (Weihnachtsgurke in German) with you as well brought to the American environment. That's how it should be Americans started hanging pickles on the Christmas tree.
Although the theory of origin cucumbers from Germany sounds convincing, it should not be true, because most Germans have never heard of this tradition. They are in 2016 also conducted research, in which it is 91 percent of German households said they didn't know what hanging pickles was supposed to mean.
It turned out that for the tradition of pickles is hidden by clever marketing. In the 90s, when the Woolworths chain started importing German decorations, they noticed that among them there are also those that are in the shape of cucumbers. Due to their special shape, they began to be attributed to them a deeper meaning, as it was a special cucumber from an unusual, exotic country. But actually this one never it had nothing to do with German tradition.
More information:
yougov.de
