In America, our Christmas traditions are mostly indoors, be they
huddling around the fire with family or missing your connection at O’Hare. The
Swiss, however, are an outdoorsy people, and just because their country at
Christmastime is a dark and frozen tundra, they won’t be dissuaded. If
anything, they double-down on their outdoorsiness in the form of Christmas
Markets.
Christmas Markets, as I understand them, are outdoor wintertime
markets that are popular in countries where markets shouldn’t be outdoors in
winter. These yuletide bazaars provide a host of culturally-specific Christmas
fare (most of which involves pretzels) and the camaraderie that comes from
shopping with your countrymen as you slowly freeze to death.
