The eleventh door - Pickle, anyone?

I wrote about this last year on our guild blog, but I just can't get over it, so I'll tell the story once again here.
On Christmas Eve a long time ago I got a big parcel from the tall guy. I dug deeper and deeper, through the paper, if I remember right there was also a stone in there, and then I found it - a plane ticket to the USA. I think I jumped around like a rubber ball. Then I saw the date for the flight there - the 28th of December?? I had to work the week after the holidays! The tall guy calmed me down. My boss came home from his family a day earlier to take over and they had already filled out my vacation request. I still have to swallow when I think of it, that was so lovely!

Once I had arrived in the USA, my friend took me to visit one of her friends. She had a beautiful house and a huge Christmas tree and there it was hanging in all innocence - a glass pickle. I thought that was very funny and asked her where she found that.


Just imagine my surprise when she told me that the Christmas pickle was a German tradition! And there I always thought I was German and still had never heard about that anywhere. Not in my family, not from any of my friends.
Obviously the pickle is hung into the tree in a hidden spot and the child who spots it first, gets a small extra gift. Oooookay. A nice idea, but I still insisted I had never heard of it in Germany.

It seems no one can actually tell how the Christmas pickle and its story were born, but it is produced in Germany now.
Maybe one of you can bring light into that sour darkness? ;-)