St. Martin's Day

On November 11th, Bavaria celebrated St. Martin's Day.  In case you don't know who St. Martin is, here is the story.  The feast day, is November 11, the feast day of St. Martin, who started out as a Roman soldier. He was baptized as an adult and became a monk. It is understood that he was a kind man who led a quiet and simple life. The most famous legend of his life is that he once cut his cloak in half to share with a beggar during a snowstorm, to save the beggar from dying of the cold. That night he dreamed that Jesus was wearing the half-cloak Martin had given away. Martin heard Jesus say to the angels: "Here is Martin, the Roman soldier who is not baptised; he has clothed me.

To celebrate this day the children in the German Kindergarten made lanterns and then marched in a parade in the evening.  You may remember this from last year when Josef was in the German school, but this year it was Gretchen's turn!

This is Gretchen's sun lantern she made at school.

 

Gretchen was very excited to be walking in the parade.

I tried to get a picture of the lantern lit up in the dark.

All bundled up and ready to go!  I bought Josef and Katriana lanterns so they could walk in the parade too.

Before the parade, we go to church and the priest talks about St. Martin and the kids put on a little skit about him.  Here is Gretchen sitting next to our neighbors who also go to the German Kindergarten.

It was hard to get good pictures in the church, but you can see the little St. Martin skit.

Let the parade begin!!  

St. Martin led the parade around the city streets of our neighboring town of Poppenhausen.

After the parade, all of the Kindergarten kids got a St. Martin's cookie!!  It was funny.....Gretchen kept saying it was a ghost cookie because it only had eyes.  Too cute!

A big storm blew in that night, but thank goodness it didn't start pouring until the very end of the parade!  It was neat to be a part of this German tradition!!