Where can you celebrate Christmas in the German capital Berlin if you have no home of your own? One option is the church service at the main train station on Christmas Eve.
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The Berlin City Mission will hold a Christmas service in the center of the main hall at the capital's central station on Sunday. During the Christmas Eve service, which is being held for the 18th time since the opening of the main station in 2006, church bells ring through the loudspeaker system. The congregation sits on simple wooden benches; many people hold plastic bags that contain all their belongings as they sing Christmas carols from a hymn sheet.
Pastor Christian Ceconi, the director of the Berlin City Mission, will give the sermon on Sunday (Christmas is celebrated on December 24 in Germany). Run by the Protestant Church, the nonprofit association is the German capital's best-known provider of projects for homeless people.
Ceconi drew a parallel between the birthplace of Jesus about 2,000 years ago and today. "There were no houses available in Bethlehem," Ceconi said. "There was no place to stay. The shepherds on the outskirts of town were forced to move away."
Ceconi said Mary and Joseph and the shepherds may have seen themselves as insignificant and of no importance to anyone, but suddenly they found themselves "at the center of world history."
"A train station is always a place of transition, where people come together who would otherwise never meet," Ceconi said. "And, in the middle of it all, they meet God, just like the shepherds back then in Bethlehem."
Ceconi said he saw "a variety of totally different people" when he looked at the congregation at the main station in 2022. "There were a lot of homeless people sitting there that I might also meet when I get off the S-Bahn in the morning," he said. Other people there included travelers and workers for the national rail operator, Deutsche Bahn. "From homeless people to railroad managers, I was also touched by this mixture," Ceconi said.
How Christmas has changed in Germany since 1945
Germany may be the home of many of the world's Christmas traditions. But how the holiday is celebrated here has gone through significant changes over the last seven decades.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/S. Stache
German Christmas: From bust to boom, and back again
Christmas has gone through changes in Germany. From post-war hunger and essential-gifts-only to the luxury of the country's economic miracle in the 1950s, to this year's debate on whether powering up extravagant Christmas lights are ethical, when there is war in Europe.
Image: Thomas Kienzle/AFP/Getty Images
Christmas after the war
1945: Germany was still in ruins during the first Christmas after a devastating war. Refugees and homeless people roamed the streets as survivors started rebuilding a nation that had been destroyed by war. That Christmas, people were simply focused on finding shelter and enough food to survive a long winter.
Image: Getty Images
Postwar celebrations
1946-1949: Charity organizations distributed gifts, chocolate and sweets to impoverished children during years that were marked by hunger for many. It was said that the lack of food and housing also brought people together. Many made a great effort to somehow celebrate Christmas with what little food or gifts they had.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Christmas during the economic boom
1950s: As West Germany began to develop thanks to a postwar economic and industrial boom, Christmas celebrations reflected growing affluence. Most gifts were still practical in nature such as clothes, bed linen or cookery utensils but children also started to receive new toys.
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Festival of peace
1950-1959: As Communist-led East Germany solidified a secular, socialist ideal, its leadership decided to "de-Christianize" Christmas, just as the Nazi regime had attempted to do in the 1930s and 1940s. Christmas became a non-religious family gathering named "year's end fest" or "peace festival."
Image: picture-alliance/ ZB
East Germany's export hits
1960-1969: Traditional wood carvings from the Ore Mountains in Saxony near the border with former Czechoslovakia were highly popular, including in West Germany. They soon turned into one of East Germany's bestselling exports.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/R. Hirschberger
Growing consumerism in the West
1960-1969: In West Germany, people were becoming more prosperous. Christmas gifts grew more valuable and expensive, extending into new areas such as technology and luxury goods. But at the same time, more people were criticizing the new consumerist spirit of the event, ostensibly eroding the Christian origins of the holiday.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Germany's most important festivities
1970s: The growing culture of gift giving turned Christmas into the most important holiday of the year for retailers. Theologians complained that Easter was actually the most significant day in the Christian calendar and that the meaning of Christmas was being corrupted and commercialized.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/S. Stache
Consumerism under the tree
1980s: West Germans had finally arrived in the age of mass consumerism. Gifts were no longer essential items and people bought things for fun rather than out of real need.
1990s: After the country's reunification in 1989, many families who had been separated by borders between East and West Germany spent the holiday together for the first time. Many East Germans opted to shop for presents in the West, helping business boom in the west even as the economy slumped in the east.
Image: Fotolia/Tyler Olson
Christmas in the new Millennium
By 2023, polls show only around 56% of Germans consider themselves secular, believing in no religion. A growing number of young people in Germany attend "Christmas after-parties," events they'd go to after the customary spartan dinner and gift-giving at home. With a more relaxed attitude toward the religious aspect of the festivities, Christmas becomes more of a social event.
In 2022, the energy crisis due to the war in Ukraine led German politicians to recommend abstaining from Christmas lighting to save power. Amid the climate emergency, there has also been debates surrounding how ethical it is to have elaborately-lit Christmas displays: Was it really necessary to have that Santa Claus hanging from the balcony, or a fleet of reindeer with blinking noses on your roof?
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/S. Stache
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'Words of peace'
Berlin's main station is something of a temple of consumption 365 days a year, with supermarkets and boutiques, stores and fast-food restaurants. And then, on Christmas Eve, it becomes a cathedral for a good hour.
Unlike airports, large train stations in Germany do not generally have religious spaces or chapels. And yet the setting in Berlin almost looks as if it was made for a Christmas Eve celebration: The wooden benches stand next to a huge fir tree covered in thousands of LED lights. A wreath hangs in front of the huge glass facade, and the escalators behind the simple altar at the center of the celebration stand still for the duration of the service. As congregants sang on Christmas Eve 2022, two floors up trains from western cities such as Cologne and Amsterdam rolled onto platform 11.
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Berlin's central station is "a place of everyday life, of welcome and farewell, of frustration and joy," Monika Jung, the manager of Berlin's long-distance train stations, told DW. At Christmastime, the building shines in a festive light. "The magic of this special place is completely fulfilled when songs and words of peace fill the room," Jung said. Travelers and employees can "enjoy the moment and forget that life in the station really never stands still."
When the service is over, volunteers from Berlin City Mission stack the wooden benches, clear away the barriers, offer hot tea and look after guests who may not yet have a place to stay for the night. "For me, all those sitting there are the shepherds," Ceconi said. "After all, of all those present at the birth of Jesus Christ, the shepherds were probably the ones who least expected to make an appearance in such a story. But, at the manger, they belonged. And they could feel: God is coming to me."
People who are homeless often live in the shadows of society, Ceconi said, "and if God wants to bring light into the darkness at Christmas, then he first comes to the people in the shadows of society."
This article was originally written in German.
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