‘Tis the Season: Once upon a time …
Christmas is a time for fairy tales in Germany. But why?
Anne Vetter
As early as November, the first hints of the impending wave of fairy tales can be seen. Film posters advertise “The Nutcracker and the Four Realms,” the Semperoper shows Marie and Fritz defeating the Mouse King with Tschaikowski, in between Hansel and Gretel dancing themselves free from the clutches of the wicked witch. From one Advent Sunday to the next, the wave swells in playbills and television, before finally crashing down during the holiday week between Christmas and New Year’s Day. Cinderella finds her prince twelve times in public broadcasting during the Christmas holiday alone, not to mention the “Fairy Tale Pearls” on the television broadcasting channel ZDF and ARD’s own film fairy tale series.
Why do fairy tales and Christmas go hand in hand in German culture, even though the holiday plays no role in the stories written by Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen or Wilhelm Hauff?
“It’s quite simple: Fairy tales are an excellent way to while away the time. They just fit well with Christmas traditions established in the 19th century. They serve the same function as the Advent wreath and calendar: making the waiting easier,” explains Professor Alexander Lasch from the Chair of Linguistics and History of German at TU Dresden’s Institute of German Studies.
Numerous fairy tale collections even feature the motif of waiting, such as Arabian Nights, The Caravan or the Spessart Inn by Wilhelm Hauff, using storytelling as a remedy for time and fear.
The reason why Christmas does not appear in the fairy tales may simply be that our Christmas traditions are younger than the well-known fairy tales, and old, midwinter stories were overlaid during Christianization, which also represented the advent of the written word. Even winter motifs are rare. Mrs. Holle, the Snow Queen, The Girl with the Cinders and the start of Snow White spring to mind. But then the selection thins out. “But that isn’t important,” says Lasch. “What fairy tales have in common is the hope that the story in particular and history in general will have a happy ending. That’s the central theme of the Christmas season as well. We are waiting for the good. It’s a time of hope.”
Thanks to their narrative structure, the old popular fairy tales never go out of style and continue to inspire authors to write literary fairy tales. Even in a time flooded with distractions, they stand up to the competition. “They score in terms of rhythm, a predictable structure and repetition, numerical symbolism, a solid setting and iconic, relatively one-dimensional characters.” The prince is the prince, the princess is the princess and the witch is the witch. “Fairy tales are good at meeting children where they are. They can easily keep track of the characters and action. And when it starts with “Once upon a time...,” they know that good will win out over evil. Children love that. Only fairy tales offer that feeling. That’s why the situation at the beginning has to be so catastrophic,” says Lasch, with a nod to evil stepmothers, poor, hard-hearted parents and desperate kings. “That’s why fairy tales and other simple narrative forms are good for studies of linguistic patterns and for language learning,” says Lasch, explaining their relevance for his research.
Of course, some fairy tales don‘t have happy endings. But these are not particularly loved by children. “’The Fisherman and His Wife’ may have a clear moral – the consequences of avarice and a lack a moderation – but the end of the story is unsatisfying. It doesn’t matter to the fish that his savior is left empty-handed in the end, and his wife as well. If it had swallowed the man’s wife, the story would certainly be seen in a different light,” suggests Lasch.
Which fairy tales are especially well loved always depends on our world view and the canonization of central fairy tales. Of course, both adults and children accept a certain logical imprecision for the promise of a happy ending. That Sleeping Beauty’s castle only had twelve plates for guests is odd, but doesn’t detract from the story because we can understand the evil fairy: she has been excluded and lashes out, but that doesn’t bring her happiness. “The reason why so many of the 200 children’s and family fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm have been forgotten is that many of them no longer make sense to us,” explains Lasch.
This is also the fate of many more recent literary fairy tales written during the 19th century. The fairy tale of the dismembered hand by Hauff, the one about Little Muck and Caliph Stork and the Caravan, it seems, “may be interesting for adults, but children don’t want to hear them before bed,” considers Lasch – meaning that they have no place in a typical story-telling setting.
The fairy tale widely known in Europe, Cinderella, went through a very different transformation. Always a beloved story, the Czech-German film adaption in 1973 is the most frequently screened fairy tale film in Germany today. The rise of the film began in the 2000s as members of the generation that saw the film as children began having children of their own and wanted to rediscover fairy tales together with them. “Compared to other GDR fairy tale productions, such as the excellent King Drosselbart with Manfred Krug, Cinderella is slightly kitschy – a chamber production with three props versus an operetta with baroque sets, so to speak. It is a great film, full of details and acting of the highest quality which speaks to an extremely diverse audience,” Lasch finds. “There is a classic plot supported by excellent dialogue, which entertains children and adults alike. The costumes are beautiful, the soundtrack is fantastic, and local patriots have something to enjoy. Moritzburg Castle had recognized its own potential and developed a well-placed marketing strategy.”
The German linguistics expert says that the new film adaptions have turned the fairy tales into literary works, as the characters have become more multi-dimensional with motivations and agendas. “The film adaptions reflect society as it changes. Where do you make changes to the plot? How do you enrich it? The new version of Sleeping Beauty, for example, is something I find particularly successful. The prince becomes central and a heroic epic is told around him.”
Lasch himself is a big fan of Hauff’s fairy tales. His favorite is the version of Caliph Stork recorded and published by the LITERA label in the 1970s. “Hauff’s fairy tales are nearly all beautiful, if also complex and in need of a good deal of context. But they have the right mix of being rooted in real life and featuring comprehensible fairy tale and magical elements. The underlying tension arises because the magical piece is generally unnecessary and only makes life more complicated. The people stumble into a catastrophe because they can’t be satisfied. Coal-marmot Peter in “Heart of Stone” had already won the jackpot, but it wasn’t enough for him. The royal household eats the figs out of greed and Caliph Stork – pride cometh before the fall – forgets the magic word “mutabor” that can free him.
One fairy tale that has fallen out of favor is “The Regentrude” by Theodor Strom, which is unfair in Lasch’s opinion. “It’s something of a foil to the ‘Snow Queen.’ A boy and a girl must break a curse in an extremely dangerous scenario in order to free the world from a heat wave – a summer fairy tale.” Very timely. Or at least that’s what ARD apparently thought. “The Regentrude” is one of two newly filmed fairy tales that will complete the broadcaster’s fairy tale series this year at the height of fairy tale season on December 25, 2018.