Hide the Pickle

For political and personal reasons, I decided that this year I would do all of my Christmas shopping in my own small town, and I would avoid any and all major chain stores. I'm happy to say that my success rate on this venture is about 98%. Not too bad I'd say. So today I was doing some last minute shopping, desperately picking through the dregs of a few local stores I hadn't hit yet, when I found this funny little tree ornament, a glass pickle. How could I pass it up? When I told the woman at the checkout counter that it reminded me of someone I know, she told me there's also a little story about this glass pickle.

There's an old German custom of hiding a pickle in the Christmas tree and whoever finds it first gets either an extra goodie or a year of good luck.
Almost nobody in Germany has ever heard of this game but there are a few legends that could explain this tradition.
One is a story of a Bavarian soldier who fought in the American Civil War who claimed a pickle saved his life while he was in prison. In a letter he wrote home to family, he said a pickle gave him the mental and physical strength to live on. When he was eventually reunited with his family, he decided he wanted to continue playing the prison pickle game, but his new boyfriend misinterpreted the rules and consequently hid a real pickle in the baum.

There's an old custom at my house of hiding a pickle, but we play it all year long.