Advent has come...

Today my favorite month of the year started: December. I am a huge Christmas fan, I love everything about the holiday season – the decorations, lights, candles, biscuits and especially the cheesy and sometimes annoying Christmas songs that are played 24/7. When I was younger I couldn’t wait for Christmas Eve to arrive and wanted those three weeks until the 24^th to be over as fast as possible. Nowadays I enjoy the anticipation. Nevertheless, I still own an Advent calendar to count down the days. 

The Advent calendar is a tradition that derives from German Lutherans in the beginning of the 19^th century. Some families would count down the 24 days until Christmas by drawing chalk lines on their doors for every day beginning on December 1^st. Other families had different, more elaborate traditions, such as lighting a candle for each day, which might have been the origin of the Advent wreath. The first “real” Advent calendar was handmade in 1851, the first printed Advent calendars were created in the early 20^th century. Today there are many different types of calendars, the simplest ones show pictures behind the 24 doors and the most common ones reveal chocolate or sometimes other sweets. My mother used to fill our calendars herself with our favorite sweets or sometimes little presents. 

 Another advent tradition I already mentioned is the Advent wreath. It’s definitely not as interesting as the Advent calendar for a child, but I grew to love this tradition very much over the last few years, because I appreciate the nice and peaceful atmosphere candles create. Like the Advent calendar the Advent wreath probably comes from the Protestants. Usually the wreath contains four candles – sometimes a fifth in the middle – which stand for the four Advent Sundays before Christmas. Every Sunday you light another one, until on the last Sunday before Christmas all four are lit. If there is a fifth candle, you light it on Christmas Eve. In Catholic churches the traditional colors for the candles are violet and rose, rose for the third Sunday known as Gaudete Sunday. In my family we don’t necessarily follow this color code strictly, but at least we always have a different colored third candle. 

In addition to these two main traditions during advent, there are many other things that make this time so special for me, such as baking biscuits, watching cheesy Christmas movies, going to the Christmas market and of course spending time with my family.
It’s a very beautiful time of the year, especially if it snows. The only bad thing is that I’m terrible at choosing presents for other people and I’m always having trouble finding the right things to give to my family, which makes these few weeks also very stressful. But I guess everything has a downside…

YOUPOST 2

Americans are fat, uneducated and love guns.
Americans are generous, open-minded and hard-working.

Sounds familiar? You probably heard or even assumed some of these things yourself in the past, because these statements are just a few of the most common stereotypes about the USA. A Stereotype is a generalized judgment about a group or class of people. Contrary to popular belief stereotypes are not always negative, but can also be positive and are often based on grains of truth.

Having stereotypes about other countries and people is completely normal and often not even a conscious decision. They tend to be based on personal experience, misunderstandings, stories of other people and of course the media, literature and movies. Often countries even support certain stereotypes themselves – Austrian advertisements for example often feature idyllic mountain landscapes, traditional folk music and people in dirndl and lederhosen. 

So where does a stereotype like “Americans are fat” come from? Well, for one America probably has the biggest range of fast food chains in the world. When we think of American food, McDonald’s is often the first thing that pops into our minds. Documentaries like Super Size Me¹ only reinforce the image of “fat America”. And studies also show that it’s not a completely unwarranted belief: Over years the USA has topped lists of the most obese countries in the world. They recently have been passed by Mexico, but are still number two with an obesity rate of 31.8 percent. Among adults even 69 percent fall under a category that includes overweight and obese figures.² So as we see this stereotype is not completely baseless, but this still doesn’t mean that it applies to every single American citizen.

  
My first example was a very negative one, so it’s only fair to list a more positive stereotype as well. One would be “Americans are open-minded”. As this is more of a subjective opinion and can’t be backed up by scientific statistics it’s much harder to prove it right or wrong. Still, when you type in “positive American stereotypes” in Google, you find the adjectives friendly, welcoming, kind, etc. very often among the search results. Many people comment that Americans smile a lot, you get greeted on the streets and that people are generally very happy. Another reason why this might be a stereotype of the USA is that the immigration rate is very high and that the country is very rich in cultural diversity which can be seen as open-minded. Although this is a very nice generalization, it’s still a generalization and these are usually not completely true. So even if a large amount of Americans is said to be very friendly and open-minded, it doesn’t apply to every single one of them and you might get across some rude and unkind people, too.

In conclusion most stereotypes, negative or positive, are based on some sort of truth, but they still aren’t reliable and even if they might help us to get a quick impression of a culture or a group of people, they don’t apply to individuals. So keep in mind that when you meet a person you should never judge them by a universal belief, but get to know them personally and you will see that not every generalization is true. 

¹"Super Size Me" (2004) 

²http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/09/mexico-obesity-rate-united-states_n_3568537.html

YOUPOST 1

When the nights grow longer, the weather gets darker and colder and the leaves begin to fall from the trees it becomes clear that summer is finally over and fall has arrived. With it comes the anticipation for the great holidays the cold half of the year has to offer. But before we all go crazy because of Christmas or New Year’s Eve, there is another holiday that has gained a lot of popularity in Austria over the last few years: Halloween. Being especially popular in the US and therefore very present in American movies and TV programs, Halloween is widely believed to be an American tradition. And to be quite honest I thought so, too, for a very long time. 

But doing some research on the topic showed me how very wrong I had been. Halloween actually has its origins in Europe! To be precise it derived from the Celtic festival Samhain which was celebrated on November 1^st. In the night before Samhain it was believed that the dead returned as ghosts and to protect themselves the people left food and wine on their doorsteps for the spirits and wore masks to look like ghosts. In the 8^th century pope Gregory converted the pagan custom into a Christian one and called it All Hallow’s Day. October 31^st became All Hallow’s Eve, which turned into Halloween over the time. However, the people carried on with their old rituals and when the Irish fled from the great famine in the 19^th century, they brought their tradition to America, where it was picked up. 

Today Halloween is popular all over the world, although it’s not always called or celebrated the same: Spanish speaking countries for example have a three-day celebration called Dia de los Muertos to honor the dead who are believed to return to their earthly homes on Halloween. As already mentioned Austria has started to celebrate the custom, too. And even though I never went trick-or-treating when I was younger, I’ve been to some Halloween parties in the past and I certainly won’t miss the holiday this year!