Laternenfest

Yesterday we held our third annual Laternenfest at our house.

What is a Laternenfest? - It is one of my fondest childhood memories. What is a Lanternenfest. It is a procession as soon as it gets dark of children carrying Laternen along with adults. Everybody is singing "Laternensongs". Here is a link to a Laternenfest I found on YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WY0GUAyRNjI. The Laternen are generally handmade. In the video on YouTube it looks like the kids made them in Kindergarten (Pre-school), we made ours in the Spielgruppen, and at home. As for historic relevance the procession is to honor St. Martin. Here is the link explaining a little more about it on Wikipedia. The entry states that children go door to door - I am not familiar with that part of the tradition http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Martin%27s_Day

We had about 70 children and adults for our Laternenfest. People started coming over starting at 4:30 and we started the procession around 6 PM. It was a pot-luck. I had made Chili, Weckenmaenner. We had home-made Gluehwein....http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gluehwein. Prior to the procession everybody hung out at house. Yup, 70 people. Let me tell you that no heat was needed. We actually had to open windows as they steamed up.

Our procession was wonderful. We walked through our neighborhood here in SE PDX, it did NOT rain, and sang our songs. Our neighbors were wondering what we were doing...so close after Halloween. So much fun. The lanterns showed us the way, and we sure were able to be heard throughout the neighborhood. Some people left after the procession, the rest of us hung out at our house. The kids played hard, and the adults enjoyed each others companies. I know that I had a ton of fun.