St. Martin's Day

MartinstagIn Germany, St. Martin’s Day is a harvest festival. He is especially loved by children. After all, it is on this day that Laternenumzug takes place (in free translation - "The procession with flashlights"). It all begins in a few more days, with preparation for the event - children in kindergartens and elementary school with their own hands make flashlights from paper, where candles are inserted.

On the evening of the holiday, children together with their parents gather at an agreed place (usually near a church) and go in a column to a predetermined final point of the campaign. Normally the distance is short: 30-40 minutes, but the whole point is how it happens. The procession looks impressive - adults carry torches, children paper lanterns with lit candles. Usually, up to several hundred people participate in such campaigns, so a kind of luminous snake of hundreds of lanterns and torches is stretched around the city.

According to legend, it was in this way that fellow villagers of St. Martin looked for him in their time with lanterns and torches in order to pay tribute to him for his kindness.