“Endlich wieder Strietzeln”: the restart of German Christmas markets after the COVID-19 pandemic

German Christmas markets originated in the Medieval period as mercantile events, hosted at varied days during the advent period, thereby providing a community with necessary goods and supplies in the middle of winter. The growth of towns and the commensurate increase of retail venues reduced the need for material goods markets and shifted the emphasis to Christmas season related offerings and gifts in particular for the Bourgeois of the nascent industrial period. The advent of specialised retailers and department stores led to a widespread decline and, in many communities, to the cessation of Christmas markets during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century (Spennemann and Parker, 2021; Spennemann, 2024b). Following a brief revival in the 1930s and the immediate post-World War II period, the markets became reestablished in many communities as a result of a wave of nostalgia that swept Germany during a phase of economic insecurity in the late 1970s (Spennemann, 2024b). Commencing with the reinstitution of the Berlin Christmas market in the 1930s in a reconceptualized form with heavy emphasis on consumption and community entertainment (Spennemann, 2025b), German Christmas markets have morphed post-World War II into a seasonal event where visitors are exposed to a multitude of sensory stimuli and social interactions that blend into a unique experience (Parker et al., 2023; Spennemann and Parker, 2021). Not surprisingly then, Christmas markets are widely publicised in the travel pages of newspapers and magazines as the “must-see” event in Germany in the weeks leading up to Christmas. With over 2,000 locations (Wintertraum GmbH, 2023b) the markets attract large numbers of local, domestic and international visitors (Brida et al., 2014; Parker et al., 2023; Wölfle and Schnorbus, 2019; Spennemann, 2025a).

German Christmas markets tend to be hosted in public squares, often set in historic surroundings. In addition to feature elements such as oversized Christmas trees, nativity scenes and multi-tiered wooden pyramids, as well as Carousels, the main features of Christmas markets are the heavily decorated and illuminated wooden stalls (“Buden”) offering Christmas gifts, general wares, sweets, packaged food and gastronomy (Figure 1). The total number of stalls range from 20 to 300, subject to the size of the host community and the importance of the market (where multiple market locales exist). Depending on the nature of the locality they are arranged as clusters (Figure 3) or, more commonly, in short rows of five to ten stalls, forming “streets” (Figures 1 and 4).

The COVID-19 pandemic of 2020–2022 proved to be a cross-sectorial disruptor on a global scale. As was the case with many other festivals (Parker et al., 2024 and references therein), all German Christmas markets were cancelled in 2020 due to public health concerns during the pandemic. While some markets went online and offered Christmas decorations in the setting of virtual stalls, others developed “drive through” venues to sell the much sought after mulled wine (Parker and Spennemann, 2021). During the 2021 Christmas season, Christmas markets were again not permitted in the states of Bavaria, Brandenburg, Saxony and Thuringia, with markets in selected other communities also cancelled, often at short notice.

Anecdotal evidence from various Christmas markets, as publicised in the press, suggests that the associated loss of income during the COVID-19 pandemic (Quecke and Gontek, 2021) caused several stall holders to cease operating and leave the industry or accelerated their decision to retire (Landgraf, 2023; Hagenacker, 2022; Dpa, 2023). In many communities it became major a problem to attract vendors offering artisanal products, whereas gastronomy operators were easier to recruit (Anonymous, 2022a, b; Jessen, 2022; Landewelle, 2023; Pohle, 2022; Gospodarczyk, 2023). Difficulties in attracting staff back into the industry further compounded the problem, especially for vendors of gifts and artisanal products (Landewelle, 2023; Dpa, 2023).

The literature on event and festival management tends to focus on the roles, meanings and impacts of festivals in society and culture; the role of festivals as attractors in the economic development of a locality; and the role of production and marketing of festivals (Armbrecht et al., 2021; Mair and Whitford, 2013; Mair and Weber, 2019; Li and Petrick, 2005; Wilson et al., 2017; Laing, 2018). In the marketing and hosting space much emphasis is placed on the tourism aspects of events (Laing, 2018; Tran et al., 2023). Some attention is also paid the hosting, staging, and marketing of events with emphasis of key attractions and headline acts, while the “supportive cast” usually gains less attention. While there is no formal, overarching theory of festival management, festivals can be grouped into primarily consumptive (e.g. music festivals, film festivals), observational/transactional (e.g. trade fairs and exhibitions), participatory (e.g. agricultural shows, theme parks) and experiential. Contemporary Christmas markets fall into the latter category as they have no single headline act, ride or commercial impetus that motivates to visit, but rather tend to offer a whole experience. Individual attractions, such as children’s rides, are being subsumed within the multifaceted range of market offerings.

A Christmas market experience is characterised by a melange of sensory stimuli (primarily visual, olfactory and auditory), the often-scenic setting in “romantic” town squares, and the anticipatory sentiment in the run up to Christmas as the penultimate milestone in the annual calendar. While the location and setting of a market, as well as its timing are predefined, the internal spatial arrangement as well as the composition of offerings are subject to change. They are defined by the market organisers, whose role in insufficiently explored in the literature (Wilson et al., 2017), and the nature of the vendors nominating to participate. While the festival literature has commented on temporal changes in festival foci (Parker et al., 2024), little attention seems to have been placed on the internal make up of markets and how these change over time. The same applies to Christmas markets.

Despite a growing body of literature on the history, material culture and social relevance of the Christmas markets (Spennemann, 2024a; Kammerhofer-Aggermann et al., 2003; Hirschfelder, 2014; Göbel and Schramm, 2001; Spennemann and Parker, 2021; Spennemann, 2024b; Spennemann, 2025b; Kumlehn, 2006; Jank, 2010), there is a glaring absence of research that examines the actual composition of such markets at any point in time, let alone as a trajectory over time.

In this paper we will provide a first-ever snapshot of the nature of offerings, classifying the stall composition of well over 100 markets of the 2023 season. We will also examine the markets of 38 communities, for which pre- and post-pandemic data could be compiled, to assess whether the above cited effects of the pandemic on stall holders are reflected in the data. Finally, we establish a time series for selected communities going back for up to ten years, allowing us to examine longer term trends.

Individual market organisers will, by necessity, focus on the planning and marketing of their own market and, out of curiosity or marketing rationale, may look at the make-up of competitors in the Christmas market space, but will be unlike to carry out a sector-wide analysis. This paper has implications beyond Christmas markets as it shows both short-term and long-term trends that can only be illuminated with a larger, trans-regional dataset.

The title of the paper, “Endlich wieder Strietzeln” (English as “Finally Strietzeln again”) is derived from a program brochure published by the organisers of the 588th Strietzelmarkt in Dresden, referring to the return of Christmas markets after the two-year hiatus of the COVID-19 pandemic (Landeshauptstadt Dresden, 2022), thus being the inspiration of this research paper.

Systematic searches of the WWW were carried out to find webpages maintained by local councils and agencies managing the markets and which contained either lists of stall holders or provided labelled plans of stalls. The search logics employed were.

1. [“Weihnachtsmarkt” or “Christkindlmarkt”] + [“Standplan” or “Budenplan” or “Hüttenplan”]

2. [“Weihnachtsmarkt” or “Christkindlmarkt”] + [“Beschickerliste” or “Anbieterliste” or “Standbesitzer” or “Beschicker” or “Anbieter”]

Where organizer’s or local council’s web offerings provided links to plans or lists of stall holders, attempts were made to access historic versions of that website. As organisers do not tend to retain their webpages once the market has concluded, but use the same URL for the following year, older versions can usually not be located via standard web searches. While the use of the internet Wayback machine (Internet Archive, 2024) is a common approach, these searches were not always successful, because many onwards links had not been archived, the actual PDF files not been archived, or were only archived in corrupted (and unrecoverable) form. Several of the archived historic pages offered plans of stalls that originally had been presented as interactive maps but where the functionality was lost in the archiving process (due to the fact that the internet Wayback machine preserves webpages but not the underlying website architecture/coding). In some instances it was possible, however, to retrieve the required information because it was embedded in the underlying html source code of the webpage (which can be viewed and interpreted by choosing the developer option in most web browsers). An additional data set was derived from a publication discussing the various offerings of the Nürnberg Christkindlmarkt in 1998/9 (Haid, 1999).

The number of the Christmas markets examined in this paper, with communities across Germany, made it impractical, and financially prohibitive to visit each the of organisers (departments of city councils; independent council marketing companies and private commercial entities), many of which have changed in the past decade. Attempts were made to obtain data vie digital correspondence, but experiences for this, and for another paper, have shown that such data, where they exist, are frequently treated as commercial in confidence and not made available, even in “sanitized” form, due to privacy concerns.

To assess the overall frequency the number of markets, the market listings of two major websites were collated: www.weihnachtsmarkt-deutschland.de for the period 2007–2010 and www.deutsche-weihnachtsmaerkte.de for the period 2011–2023.

The definitions of the size classes for the communities that host the Christmas markets draw on the German classification, which distinguishes between village (“Landgemeinde”, <5,000 inhabitants), town (“Kleinstadt”, 5,000 < 20,000), medium town (“Mittelstadt”, 20,000 < 100,000) and city (“Großstadt”, >100,000) (BBSR, 2022). Each class is divided into small and large at 50% split for each class except for large cities which were classified as having more than 500,000 inhabitants.

Some markets were organised by or held in suburbs of larger communities with the named suburbs denominating the market. In these cases, the population figure for that suburb was taken to define the size of the community. For example, the Christmas market in Schwabing (with a population of 68,603) was classified as “large medium town” even though Schwabing is a suburb of München, which itself is a “große Großstadt” (population 1.472 million). This approach is justified because suburb-based Christmas markets primarily service that suburb and therefore service a community of that population size.

The data show that, for the period of investigation, available market listings had increased year on year for almost every German state until the pandemic closure of 2020. Using the more consistent second dataset from 2011 onwards, all states showed an increased number of listed markets for the period 2011–2019 (Table 1), with the average numeric increase being 36, and proportional increase 71%. Significant increases in market numbers were observable in Nordrhein-Westfalen (increase n = 120, 88% higher), Baden-Württemberg (n = 97, 42%) and Bayern (n = 95, 52%). Where states observed very high increases in proportion of markets listed, actual numeric increases were comparatively lower. Examples include the tripling of market numbers in Bremen and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (increase from 2 to 6, 13 to 30 respectively), and the doubling of Sachsen-Anhalt (from 24 to 47) from 2011 until the pandemic period.

The pandemic period influenced market numbers in unique and unusual ways. As observable, no markets were in operation throughout Germany in Christmas 2020—not at all surprising given the official stipulated shutdown. However, data show that the restart of the Christmas markets post-pandemic was not consistent nor uniform across all states. Whilst four states continued with no operational markets in 2021 (Bayern, Brandenburg, Sachsen, and Thüringen) due to pandemic-related public health mandates, some states observed a large reduction in both number and proportion of markets offered: Berlin state had 21 fewer markets, being around a third of 2019 numbers; and both Saarland and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern had 19 fewer markets, being 24% and 51% of pre-pandemic numbers respectively. Interestingly, states which exhibited a marked number decline post-pandemic tended to have a lower market representation pre-pandemic. However, some states showed an increase in market numbers in the first-year post-pandemic (2021); Hessen and Nordrhein-Westfalen showed both a large increase in market numbers and proportion (n = 28, 23%; n = 32, 13% respectively). For the following season (Christmas 2022), all states had market numbers at or exceeding those pre-pandemic, and similar observances were found for the subsequent year (2023), albeit with higher numbers—except for the state of Bremen which showed a small numeric decrease of one market (16% decline). While states showing the largest numerical increase tended to have the higher number of markets pre-pandemic (Bayern, Nordrhein-Westfalen), states with the largest proportional increase tended to have fewer markets pre-pandemic (Brandenburg, Hamburg). In summary, there was a significant rebounding of Christmas market offerings across all German states post-pandemic, with numbers greatly exceeding that pre-pandemic as a general observable trend—and notably so in the most recent year.

This section highlights the general German Christmas market arrangement for the most recent season, by way of stall numbers and composition, classified through the community size typologies as discussed above. The size of the host community is largely, but not unequivocally correlated with the numbers of stalls operating at any given market (Table 2); typically, the larger the community, the greater number of stalls.

Similarly, some generalisations can be made of the typical stall composition of a 2023 German market, when classed by community size (Table 3). Proportions of stalls purveying “Packaged foods” are largely similar across all community classes (4.8–8.1%), whereas proportions of stalls offering “Sweets”, “Christmas decorations” and (general) “Gifts” typically increase with larger community size. Deviations from these trends are the low percentage of sweet stalls and the high percentage of general gifts observed in the small towns of the sample and the comparatively high proportion of Christmas decorations in large towns.

Gastronomy stalls for food and drink present a more complex picture. Gastronomy offerings were proportionally most represented in mid-sized communities, in particular in small medium towns (Figure 2). The lowest proportion was observed in large cities. These observations need to be considered cum grano salis, however, as the standard deviations are very wide, falling between 30% and 55% of the mean proportion. Only large cities have a somewhat smaller standard deviation (19.5% of the mean). When comparing the two gastronomic categories against each other (as a ratio of drink stalls over food stalls) no pattern emerged, with small medium towns (89.7 ± 37.4) and villages (84.3 ± 29.2) having the highest ratios of drink stalls, and large cities (59.0 ± 24.7) and larger small towns (57.9 ± 43.4) having the lowest. Again, standard variations are large, indicating considerable variability in gastronomic offerings between the communities that hosted the 2023 Christmas markets.

Having highlighted the state of typical market stall composition over the most recent period of 2023, this section seeks to compare the variance of composition of markets, pre- and post-pandemic for selected German markets. Data pairs could be compiled for 38 markets (Table 4). Due to limitations in data availability (see Methodology), these pairs are not a stratified sample.

Notable variances between the two time periods were observed for stalls purveying gastronomy and gifts. When comparing the data pairs, gastronomic offerings increased in 78.4% of all instances (paired T-test, p = 0.0095), primarily at the expense of general gifts and wares, which decreased in 73% of the markets (p = 0.0027). Among stalls offering sweets, the increases in some markets 2023 were cancelled out by the decreases in other markets. Of the markets vending Christmas-specific gifts, 60% saw a decrease while 40% showed an increase but the difference is not significant. There were no general proportional trends of decrease/increase of consumables (gastronomic and sweets), when markets were classified according to community size.

Of note, certain individual markets exhibited significant variance in stall composition pre-and post-COVID. Substantial increases in stalls vending “Sweets” were observable in Passau (six-fold increase), Winkelhaid (five-fold), and Siegburg (three-fold), and substantial increases in stalls vending “Decorations” were found in Kreuztal (four-fold) and Stadt Roth (doubling over this period). Large increases in gastronomy stalls were evident in Reutlingen and Ingolstadt (around 100% increase each). As noted earlier, some cities exhibited a substantial decrease in “Sweets” – Solingen and Kiel (approximately 50% decrease each); and in “Decorations” – Stuttgart and Karlsruhe (85% and 70% reduction respectively).

Alongside stall compositional variation, there were interesting variations of stall numbers and stall layout pre- and post-pandemic. Of the 38 data pairs, 62% exhibited a decrease in stall numbers, with substantial decreases observed in Fulda and Reutlingen (57% and 30% respectively). Contrarily, almost 30% of markets exhibited increased stall numbers, notably Kiel (77% increase), Magdeburg and Schwabing (both 44%). Moreover, for Christmas markets with fewer stalls over this period, adjusted layouts often resulted in a different market dynamic. Two examples may suffice. A reduction of 20 stalls (from 2019 to 2023) in the most recent Weihnachtsmarkt at Köln resulted in an adjusted layout which had considerably more open space, notably in the northern and southern sections of the square adjacent to the Kölner Dom (Figure 3). Whilst stall composition has also modified (increased gastronomy and decreased handcrafts), it is noteworthy that the carousel was also removed in the recent rendition. Similarly, the layout of Weiterstadt has become more open post-COVID (2019–2022), with visual spreading out being clearly evident in the eastern market section. Furthermore, earlier stall clustering around the southern road (Linke Allee) has declined significantly over this time period, with stalls now spreading out, extending over the northern road (Rechte Allee) (Figure 4).

Larger time series maps were available for some markets, with selections again being the result of availability of data sources. A ten-year time series could be compiled for the large city markets of Dresden, Nürnberg, Stuttgart and Duisburg (see Table 5 and Supplementary File). In examining temporal developments of the Dresden Strietzelmarkt, unique trends are revealed, both pre-and post-pandemic. Firstly, the data show that the proportion of stalls purveying gastronomy products steadily increased across the available period (R² = 0.9215), with the two renditions post-pandemic having the highest proportion to date. However, post-pandemic market compositions exhibited higher proportions of stalls purveying “Christmas decorations” and “Sweets”, contrary to decreasing trends pre-pandemic. Conversely, there was a decrease of “Packaged food” and “Other” stalls post-pandemic, contrary to the previous increasing trends. The pandemic appeared to have exacerbated pre-pandemic trends of decreasing numbers of stalls selling “Gifts”. The decrease in gift stalls and concomitant increase in gastronomy is noteworthy, considering that large cities typically contain a higher proportion of gift stalls and a lower proportion of gastronomy stalls (as discussed above).

Time series were also available for four small city markets (see Table 6 and Supplementary File). Unique trends can be observed for the Ulm Christmas market. Firstly, the data show that the proportion of stalls selling Christmas decorations steadily increased across the available time series, with the two most recent market renditions having the highest proportions. Similarly, packaged foods exhibited a steadily increasing trend. However, post-pandemic stalls reflected an increase in gastronomy offerings, contrary to decreasing trends pre-pandemic. Contrasting with the Dresden Striezelmarkt, the Ulm market exhibited a slight decrease in stalls selling “Sweets” post-pandemic as well as a substantial increase in “Other” stalls. The proportion of “Activities” being offered also returned to pre-pandemic levels in the 2023 rendition, following two years of post-pandemic decline. Finally, stalls selling “Gifts” followed typical pre-pandemic decreasing trends, with the two recent renditions exhibiting the lowest proportion on record.

Long time series data were also available for two large towns, two large medium towns, and one small medium town (see Table 7 and Supplementary File). For expediency, only one dataset (large town Regen) will be presented here in detail. Similarly to Dresden, composition of the Regen Christmas market post-pandemic exhibited a sharp increase in sweet stalls, reversing the pre-pandemic trend, while proportion of stalls selling general gifts was the lowest in 2023. Packaged goods stalls demonstrated an increase across both periods, but the proportion post-pandemic was significantly greater. Most interestingly, and unique to Regen, whilst proportions of food gastronomy decreased across pre- and post-pandemic periods, drink stalls increased post-pandemic, reversing previous decreasing trends.

Despite the significant rebounding of German Christmas markets numbers post-pandemic – with most markets returning to, and exceeding pre-pandemic numbers, the COVID pandemic has clearly influenced compositional variances of stall offerings in a myriad of ways. While gastronomic offerings generally increased at the expense of gifts and wares, other compositional changes cannot be considered uniform across all markets. What seems to be clear, however, is that the pandemic period further accelerated the change of Christmas markets to act as more of an experiential event, rather than being grounded in the traditional mercantile.

The foundations for the trajectory of Christmas markets to become a season-specific experiential event were laid in the 1930s, when the formally reinstituted Christmas market at the Lustgarten resembled a fun fair replete with go-kart tracks and roller coasters, albeit with a seasonal Christmas flair (Spennemann, 2025b). While the Nuremberg Christmas market of the same period lacked the fairground rides, it was a carefully staged event replete with lights, sounds, pomp and circumstance (Braun, 2012). Common to both was that the organisers of the tightly controlled and staged markets placed considerable emphasis on the gastronomy sector. While the food rationing and austerity of the Second World War and immediate post-war period restricted the gastronomy element, that regained significance once the markets proliferated during the wave of nostalgia in the late 1970s. Increasing disposable income fuelled ad-hoc consumption of gastronomy offerings, while the mercantile element of the markets experienced increased competition by the convenience of heated department stores which provided alternative venues for the purchase of Christmas presents (Spennemann, 2024b).

Clerics and theologians of various Christian denominations commented on and loudly deplored the shift in emphasis towards an increasingly consumption-focussed and experiential dimension, detached from the Christmas spirit that, in their view, should pervade the advent season (Frevel, 2016; Kumlehn, 2006; Glaser and Schulze, 2004; Kern, 2015). The latter supposition overlooks that Christmas markets are firmly rooted in purely mercantile origins (Spennemann and Parker, 2021) and that the special connection with the advent season is in fact a Bourgois construct of the industrial period. Not all communities are purely reactive to changes in economic circumstances of stall holders and their willingness to participate but regulate the composition of their market offerings. When the town council of Baden–Baden (Baden-Württemberg) took over the running of its Christkindlmarkt in 1980, for example, it restricted gastronomic offerings to 25% of all stalls—a proportion that has not changed ever since (Baden-Baden Kur and Tourismus GmbH, 2020).

The time series data compiled for this paper, however, demonstrate that in many communities the proportion of stalls purveying gastronomy products steadily increased during the first and second decade of this century while the proportion of general gifts decreased. This is well demonstrated when the available time series data are combined into three-year intervals which shows a steady trend of increasing gastronomy offerings which is contrasted by a steady trend of decreasing offerings of general gifts and wares as well as Christmas decorations (Table 8). No trends can be observed in the offerings of sweets, with small fluctuations in both directions. The increase in gastronomy offerings between the period 2014–2016 and the period 2017–2019 was significant, as was the increase between 2017 and 2019 and the post-pandemic period of 2021–2023. The severe disruption of the Christmas markets and the itinerant show business in general caused by the COVID-19 pandemic only accelerated existing trends.

While the causality of these trends is not unequivocally clear, multiple factors are likely at play. It can be posited that competition by department stores and online shopping, with their lower prices, impacted the viability of several stallholders. Anecdotal evidence, drawn from scattered newspaper items, suggests that inter-generational change was also at play, with older stallholders giving up their business in view of falling profits. This in particular seems to have applied to stallholders selling seasonal (i.e. Christmas wares), and stall holders who did not travel the wider festival circuit. In the absence of new purveyors of goods entering the space, the available stall positions were taken up by gastronomy providers, all of which serviced a wide range of fairs and festivals almost all year round. This decline in the offering and Christmas wares was exacerbated by a general trend in the German populace where people regard Christmas markets less and less as the preferred opportunity to purchase Christmas presents (Likert-like scale 1–7, 2012 average 4.46, 2023 average 2.82) (Gansser, 2012; Gansser and Reich, 2023). Further, itinerant gastronomy providers service a wide range of community fairs and markets almost all-year round (although with season-specific offerings, e.g. mulled wine in the case of Christmas markets), whereas purveyors of goods and wares carry an inventory that may be much more event specific and where unsold stock becomes a financial liability. Finally, Christmas markets have become a social and experiential event attendance of which lends itself to the ad hoc consumption of gastronomic offerings and the purchase of sweets, rather than the purchase of goods. While online commerce has damaged the mercantile aspects of Christmas markets, social media may well ensure their survival in their manifestation as experiential events (Parker et al., 2023). Both the immediacy and the influence of social media on visitation of places and events have given participation a wider reach and a new meaning beyond the confines of the specific locality and setting.

Additionally, policy has utilised tourism and hospitality as instruments of pandemic recovery across many cities, and the recovery of hospitality and concomitant increase of visitor expenditure has been a common policy aim since the pandemic (Orîndaru et al., 2021; Zhang et al., 2024). Whilst possible that this could partly account for the greater emphasis in gastronomy seen at the reopened markets, most European Christmas markets are organised by cooperatives or non-for-profit entities, being central to town communities. We would therefore not generally attribute festivals as planned instruments of pandemic recovery. However, economic potential for pandemic recovery is there (especially in larger tourist-centric markets), and future research could investigate this further in more detail, but which falls outside of the scope of this paper.

The shift towards the experiential is evident in other studies and has wider implications for other cultural events which may be recognised as symbols of a given community (Dridea and Dobrotă, 2024; Dodds et al., 2016). This phenomenon, which was anecdotally attributed to the pandemic, appears in fact to be developing from longer-lasting roots with the pandemic period exacerbating trends which had already manifested prior. It raises questions of market trajectories with respect to authenticity and visitor experience, and awareness of these changes may elicit appropriate management responses – ultimately guided through an organisation’s determination of a market’s focus. Moreover, it implies that Christmas markets, like many other cultural activities are temporally changeable, through natural flux, societal change, and/or as a result of policy decisions. Our findings therefore contribute further to the post-pandemic recovery debate, suggesting that a rethink of anecdotal knowledge of pandemic impacts of events and festivals take place, with longer-term verification of knowledge required, as assumptions of changes impacted by the pandemic (e.g. visitor numbers and composition, product development) could just as similarly be protracted.

As this study has shown, the COVID-pandemic exacerbated a longer-term trend where German Christmas markets have developed into more of an experiential event, rather than being grounded in the traditional mercantile origin purveying Christmas-related offerings and gifts. This has implications for (amongst others) fields of tourism, festival planning and heritage studies. The COVID-pandemic has been a cross-sectoral disruptor that seems to have forced many stallholders at Christmas markets, in older, long-established participants with a narrow traditional, but less desired range of offerings, to reassess their long-term viability, and commitment, to the business. Their withdrawal led to significant changes in the overall offerings available to the visitor, but also opened up spaces for other offerings, thereby providing market organisers with an opportunity to refocus the markets. There is a reinforcement loop between the appeals of a given Christmas market to visitors, where the appeal is comprised of a range of factors such as setting, atmosphere, and the goods/gastronomy offered.

The question arises for organisers whether to allow a continuation down this current trajectory, or whether management strategies should be employed to revamp and revive traditional focus on gifts, handicrafts and wares. One of the criterion would be how the focus and intention for the Christmas market fits into the overall suite of festivals offered by a given community. As any community-focussed festivals and markets, Christmas markets are reflective of the social and cultural values of a community, which are not static, but undergo intergenerational change (Spennemann, 2022). The longer-term changes discussed in this paper reflect changing social expectations of what Christmas markets represent. The cultural and ethnic composition of Germany has undergone a profound change during the end of the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty-first century, which is well reflected in the change in gastronomic offerings at festivals and markets, including Christmas markets which now have an international, rather than “traditional German” flavour (e.g. langos, döner, gyros etc.). This shapes the perceptions of the current generation of children and young adults as to what a Christmas market represents and what they, in turn, will expect of such a market when they themselves become adults taking their own children.

At the same time, Christmas markets are heavily marketed to international tourists as the quintessential pre-Christmas attraction of Germany and as a must-see element on the “bucket list” of any winter trip to Europe. While some aspects have been examined (Parker et al., 2023), there is no formal analysis that examines the focus and language of marketing, let alone marketing to international tourists, not is there an analysis of whether expectations of international visitors have been met.

While this is not the place to explore the possible future(s) of Christmas markets in greater detail, it can be posited that a discrepancy will emerge between the pragmatic expectations of the local community and domestic tourists on the one hand, and the romanticised anticipations of international tourists on the other. As both market segments are essential for commercial success, market managers will need to balance these competing perceptions. Christmas markets represent urban planning en miniature, and thus can be zoned and “engineered”. This can occur through overall regulation, as in the case of Baden–Baden which restricts gastronomic offerings to 25% of all stalls (Baden-Baden Kur and Tourismus GmbH, 2020), through spatial separation of target audiences (family, “party goers”, LBQTI+) as in the case of Frankfurt (Tourismus+Congress Gmbh, 2017, 2024) or via other means. Christmas market organisers need to adapt and innovate, as ignoring the existing underlying trends as well changes to the cultural and ethnic composition of Germany may lead to failure (Carlsen et al., 2010).

German Christmas markets offer unique sensory stimuli and place of social interaction, attracting large numbers of local, domestic and international visitors. The COVID-19 pandemic caused the cancellation of all German markets in Christmas 2020 and the exclusion of many in 2021. As anecdotal evidence suggested a disparity of return for some stallholder types, such as more gastronomy and fewer artisanal crafts offerings, this study aimed to find if this theory is reflected in real-world data.

Using systematic web searches across 2007–2023, we provide a first-ever classification of stall composition of the 2023 season, as well as a detailed investigation of compositional return post-COVID, using both short- and long-term data, to investigate the effects the pandemic had on German Christmas markets. Whilst we found a significant rebounding of these markets post-pandemic, strong compositional variances were also observable between the two time periods – notably so with gastronomic offerings increasing at the expense of gifts and wares. We also found variations of stall numbers and layouts within markets over time, which has potential to alter market dynamics, amenity and social experience. This, combined with stall composition variance, has potential to significantly affect overall market experience (sensory, social and cultural), for local, domestic and international visitors. As a case example, this paper has wider implications for post-pandemic recovery theories for events and festivals. Methodologically, this paper has implications beyond Christmas markets as a case study, as it highlights the potential that a cross-sectoral analysis based on a larger, trans-regional dataset can illuminate both short-term and long-term trends. In the context of Germany, the question arises whether the trends towards gastronomic at the expense of gifts and wares also manifests at other seasonal summer and autumn festivals and whether this is reflective of a wider social trend. The role of social media in the generation and perpetuation of the experimental dimension warrants attention. Future research in these areas is likely to yield fruitful insights into social and cultural change.

Funding: Murray Parker’s work was supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship (Charles Sturt University). The authors have no other funding to declare.

The supplementary material for this article can be found online