kein Laub

I should be reading for class - because I'm two weeks behind, with not a lot more time today - but I feel like writing instead so I'll try to slip this one in before Christopher gets home from school and November becomes December.*

As I'm sure I've mentioned here before I loooooove Christmas songs and I've always wanted to do a singing advent calendar, so here's entry #1 for yesterday, November 29: the first Sunday of Advent and Birthday of My Most Favored Brother.

Yesterday we were getting ready for the kids' service and I was carrying things up from the basement via the stairs that go from the basement to the foyer on the ground floor to the church upstairs - quietly, because Sunday Mass was underway - and the congregation was singing "Maria durch den Dornwald ging" and it was so pretty and, you know, Advent-y, and I felt lonely and sad that I wasn't up there singing too except I wasn't up there by choice because I think that having church services right now (never mind *congregational singing* at church services) is a Bad Idea, and yet there they were, 50 (yep, right there at the upper limit on attendance) Old People of Altstetten, obviously enjoying themselves and who am I trying to protect here exactly and if I'm so against congregating why am I busy helping to get ready for the kids' service?? You can see why I haven't been writing lately. So anyway. Maria is pregnant with Jesus, she walks through a thorny wood that has been bare for seven years, the thorns bloom with roses. Wikipedia and other sources say that the song is meant to sound old but was probably a Romantic invention, popularized by the German youth movement of the early 20th century. ("Youth movements" are, like, a thing here? and I have no idea what exactly they entail?) I can sympathize with the barren wood.

Maria durch ein Dornwald ging

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDfAhzaiy5A (are these people dressed for a funeral? unclear.)

Maria durch ein Dornwald ging.
Kyrie eleison!
Maria durch ein Dornwald ging,
Der hat in sieben Jahrn kein Laub getragen.
Jesus und Maria.

Was trug Maria unter ihrem Herzen?
Kyrie eleison!
Ein kleines Kindlein ohne Schmerzen,
Das trug Maria unter ihrem Herzen.
Jesus und Maria.

Da haben die Dornen Rosen getragen.
Kyrie eleison!
Als das Kindlein durch den Wald getragen,
Da haben die Dornen Rosen getragen.
Jesus und Maria.

Unrelated exercise: find the cow. (Hint: look behind the tree.)

* what actually happens when I try to do this is that I get stuck trying to finish what I'm writing and neglect and/or snap at the thing I'm supposed to be moving on to. Which in this case was Christopher, though I did in the end manage to make him a smoothie for his afternoon snack so I'm not a terrible mother, just a distracted one.