Funkenfeuer

Now that I'm back in Deutschland after 2 weeks in the States, I'm hoping that I can catch up on some blogs before we take too many more pictures that I want to blog about! 

The first Sunday in Lent is an interesting day here in Germany.  Every town has a Funkenfeuer which means Beacon in English.  Basically this is the day that Germans build large fires to burn their Christmas trees from the previous Christmas.  Brian and I were unaware of this day until we were on our way to church in the evening and our friends told us about this.  They had taken some pictures of the process of the Funkenfeuer, so we got them to show my mom's students and put on the blog.

Here is Gus bringing their Christmas tree to the large pile of Christmas trees.  These will all be burned later in a very large fire!

Here is the beginning of the Christmas tree pile to be burned.  They build a wooden frame to support all the trees in one big pile and then they burn the whole thing.  Notice the tent and couch on the left of the picture.  This is where several people spend the night before the fire.  It takes a while to construct this and they don't want anyone setting fire to it before the time, so they stay there to avoid this.

Here is some more construction of the fire.  Probably not the safest, but it works!

This tractor came by several hours before the fire was to start.  These guys go around the town (drinking beer, of course!) collecting Christmas trees to bring to the fire.

Here is Brian, Lindsay, and I at the fire about a half hour after it had started.  It was still huge!  We saw fires like this all over on our half hour ride home from church.