I just love the German tradition of the Lantern Walk for children with their families. The Lantern walks usually take place in late October and November, although some hard-core traditionalists will tell you that they should take place the Sunday after November 11, which is St. Martins Day. Our international school combined the traditions of Halloween with the Lantern walk and it was a cozy, happy celebration.
A typical Lantern walk is lead by part of a marching band, playing their brass horns into the night air. A long parade of children with families and sometimes dogs follow behind, singing traditional songs and proudly holding their self-made lanterns in front of them to light the way. On our first lantern walk, when our daughter was two, many of the lanterns had real candles in them. Children work hard in their kindergardens (pre-schools) and at home to make their own lanterns, usually out of paper-mache applied to a balloon, and then the balloon is popped leaving a lovely hard and colorful shell. My five-year-old was delighted to show me the purple, gold and red colors on her lantern.
On our lantern walk this year, we were blessed with warm weather and a stunning array of yellow and golden colors above, below and around us as we made our way through the trees and along side the river. I was so happy to walk behind my daughter side-by-side with her friends, singing loudly the same songs over and over. We ended up back at the kindergarden, enjoying hot cocoa, pumpkin soup and bratwurst. The lantern walk is yet another German tradition that I have come to love that uses home-made creations, simple decorations, music and singing, and nature as the backdrop.
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