My family’s December is filled with Christmas traditions. As a kid, I couldn’t wait to climb into the attic and dig out our boxes of holiday decorations. My younger brother always remembered exactly where we had stored the boxes the year before, and his first order of business was to unearth the stocking and hang them by the fireplace. My favorite box contained our Christmas picture books. Certain stories were reread so many times over the holidays that we all knew them by heart, including the “The Grinch” and “The Berenstain Bears’ Christmas Tree.” Finding a Christmas tree with the Dunklees was almost as much of an adventure as with the Berenstain Bears. It involved a parade down the driveway with the dogs trotting eagerly ahead and the cats trailing along behind. In the swamp we would pick out our “perfect” tree (it usually had a tangle of unkempt boughs and was missing branches in key places). My brothers and I would argue over who got to saw it down and drag it back on the sled.
Back at home, we’d eat dinner around a table glowing with candle light. At the center of the table sat a German Christmas pyramid with intricate wood carvings.
Our Christmas pyramid depicts scenes of wise men, shepherds and angels.
When I showed up at my parents’ house a couple days before Christmas this year, I discovered my father’s workbench covered in wood shavings, delicate saw work, and half finished carvings. He’s tackling a project that he’s been talking about for years: building his own spinning pyramid.
My dad's work bench, covered with half-finished parts for the wooden pyramid he is building.
Christmas pyramids originated in the Erzgebirge Mountains (also known as the Ore Mountains) of Germany along the Czech border, and evolved out of similar ancient traditions as the Christmas tree. For hundreds of years, the inhabitants of the Erzgebirge region mined silver, tin, iron and copper, but as the minerals ran out, they needed to supplement their income. They turned to wood carving and toy making, and the region is now famous for making spinning pyramids and nutcrackers, among other things. Most of the creations depict either religious themes or folk themes, such as mining. Unlike most of the things we see for sale today, these wood carvings are not mass produced, and none of them look exactly the same.
Wooden masterpieces for sale in an Altenberg shop.
Altenberg, Germany lies in the heart of the Erzgebirge region and has many shops that showcase such wood carvings. It is also famous for its biathlon venue. I have been lucky enough to visit Altenberg for IBU Cup biathlon races and to see shops filled with wooden figurines, mining arches, and spinning pyramids.
January 2009. I'm standing in front of a giant spinning wooden pyramid in downtown Altenberg. Altenberg lies in the Erzgebirge region of Germany and is famous for these sorts of wood carvings.
Susan Dunklee 