Frohe Weihnachten!

A month ago, I thought it was just an anomaly. I thought the big Edeka on Habsburger Strasse was simply selling leftovers from last year, clearing out straggling inventory, perhaps from a dusty, misplaced box recently re-discovered in the storeroom.

But then they appeared in the back-to-school section of the Karstadt department store.

With the sudden and purposeful arrival two weeks ago of similar items at our small corner Edeka, the evidence became too strong to overlook, and could only mean one thing: Advent, the secular season that, in the U.S., begins the day after the Hallowe'en candy is cleared from the shelves, starts even earlier in Germany.

The consequence is that we have over three months--more than a quarter of the year!--to enjoy Lebkuchen. Traditional German christmas cookies, Lebkuchen are made with ground almonds, hazelnuts, or walnuts, candied orange and lemon peel, flour, eggs, honey, and spices of the cinnamon/cardemom/cloves variety. They're baked on thin wafers called Oblaten, and then brushed with a barely crispy sugar or chocolate glaze. Sometimes jam is involved, sometimes decorative blanched almonds and candied fruit. The shapes vary from traditional rounds to hearts, Christmas trees, and pretzels. The cheap ones, many of which can be purchased in stores now, substitute ground apricot pits for some or all of the nuts.

Joining Lebkuchen on the shelves are Spekulatius and Pfeffernuesse, also traditional Christmas cookies. Spekulatius are thin, spiced, stamped shortbreads, sometimes with slivered almonds pressed into them; in the U.S. they're known as Dutch windmill cookies (and in the Netherlands, as Speculaas). Pfeffernuesse are little glazed spiced nut cookies. They're the crunchy hard siblings to the tender chewy Lebkuchen.

Our corner store is not terribly large. That they're dedicating almost as much shelf space to Christmas cookies (about twice what's shown in the photo) as to noodles says a lot about the expected demand for the cookies in the coming months. Such treats have not yet arrived, however, at the Lienhart bakery, where the bakers continue to produce colorful fruit tarts, as though fall has barely begun.