European Christmas Markets

Posted by David Whitley May 25, 2007

Call me an utter Scrooge, but I have never really seen the appeal of European Christmas Markets as a reason to travel to anywhere in particular. This may be because I’m not the sort of person that goes on holiday purely to go shopping, but I also don’t really see what’s so special about them.

Strip away the fancy lights, saccharine sweet carol singing and tinsel and you’ve effectively just got a normal market. Except, because it’s Christmas, they’ve got what appears to be a licence to sell all manner of rubbish – ceramic dogs, chintzy wooden holly wreaths and cheap-and-nasty jewellery that suddenly becomes OK because it looks like it’s come from a Christmas cracker.

This is probably slightly harsh – there is usually some good stuff amongst the tat, but at every European Christmas Market I’ve been to, it seems as though a lot of tourists are buying things they’ll never have use for in the spirit of seasonal goodwill.

What I do find truly perplexing, though is that people will go on bus tours to European Christmas markets. There are plenty of tour companies that offer such trips, generally involving a long drive from the UK to go shopping for novelty Santa hats.

If there was just one big Christmas market, I could perhaps understand this – it would be THE place to go to. However, just about every city in Europe seems to have one. A quick internet search reveals the Bath Christmas Market, the Lincoln Christmas Market, the Brussels Christmas Market, the Prague Christmas Market… In fact, searching for “Christmas Market” brings up over 31 million pages. Hardly unique, is it?

Still – each to their own, and I hope the nodding reindeer and crystal glass portrait of Cliff Richard go down well with the lucky recipient on December 25th.