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A NETFLIX COMEDY SPECIAL
Thank you so much!
Thank you.
Thank you. Guys!
Welcome! Nice to have you all here with us.
Especially in the middle of the Christmas season.
I'll give you credit for that.
Right now, you could have been
at some Christmas party
lying in your own vomit. But no,
you came to see me in church instead.
Peace be with you.
Isn't that...?
I think this period before Christmas is a special time of year, right?
A very special, a unique mix of
reflection and antisocial stress.
A sort of reflective stress.
But you're the one doing this to yourself.
Because you always have the feeling,
"I need to finish everything before Christmas. I have to get it done."
"No, that has to be done before Christmas. It's got to be finished."
The personal to-do lists, but also the personal conflicts.
They have to be sorted out before Christmas.
As if the world is going to end after Christmas.
Got to be done.
My uncle is a tradesman. He always gets asked
"Can you do our bathroom? But we want it done before Christmas."
He always says, "Yeah, of course, before Christmas. Just not this year."
But it is a special time of year and a joyful anticipation, right?
And to draw out this anticipation,
there are advent calendars, right?
So that you can freak out a little every day instead of all at once.
So you can have it little by little. Of course, these days there are
a ridiculous number of advent calendars.
Do any of you do handicrafts? Have you ever made one?
There are people who make them in August. But they keep it to themselves.
They keep it to themselves. Then just before Christmas they'll say
"Yeah, I made some for the whole family, of course."
For the children and then for the parents and the dog.
Where you think, "What kind of psychopaths are you?"
Which I can understand… Ah, someone's got their hand up already. Exactly.
Which I can understand if your partner is kind of sweet.
You do that, at least in the first year of the relationship.
But usually you find that for the first seven doors,
you have really good ideas, right?
Then you're like, "I'm really a great girlfriend."
"I have super creative ideas."
But after the seventh door…
Then it gets tough.
Then you think, "Yeah."
"Sod it, another Hanuta chocolate wafer."
"And another one!"
Oh, he has a hazelnut allergy. "Meh, another one!"
I once had a boyfriend. I think I was 16 at the time.
I made my then-boyfriend
an advent calendar from sandwich bags.
And in some bags there were letters inside
and when you put them together, it spelled "I love you".
Yes. I was super sweet.
But also very, very dumb.
Because there were two problems.
First problem.
After "I lov…"
It's pretty obvious where that's going.
I mean, what else could come afterwards?
I lo…unge on the sofa?
I'll deliver pizza.
I lo…ng to get my belly button pierced.
And the second problem was
I noticed on the 9th of December that, nah…
This guy is not the one.
That was a problem, and at 16 it happens fast, right?
The transition from, "Oh, my God, I'm so in love!"
to "Eww, who's that?"
is seamless.
And so, after "I love",
I simply put
"Christmas".
His present said
"I love Christmas."
Yeah.
Yeah, why? I always wanted to say it.
Oh, yeah and it's over.
That's a 16-year-old's break-up for you.
You couldn't send a text, but I didn't even answer his calls.
"I dumped him", you'd say now.
I heard recently it's now called "dumping".
You don't break up anymore, you "dump" someone.
It sounds so cool, right?
"Dumped." Sounds like you put the guy in a basket.
And then just like in Little Red Riding Hood,
put a plaid napkin on top.
And then dump him off at his mother's.
No, that was not what I'd imagined.
I recently read
that advent calendars are just like a normal calendar. A tool for counting.
And in the past,
your advent calendar would be just a bunch of chalk lines.
24 chalk lines
drawn on the wall, and the children were allowed to wipe one away every day.
That was the advent calendar.
The children must have leapt out of their feather bed full of anticipation
at 5 a.m. before heading out to dig up the frozen field.
Can you imagine that happening today?
With these spoiled little brats.
"Mom, what kind of advent calendar do I have this year?"
"Apple? Playmobil?"
"No, my son, this year we have something very special for you."
"You're allowed to wipe a line off the wall every day."
"Enjoy."
"Can I at least keep the sponge, mom?"
"No."
"And while you're at it, you can also do the kitchen floor."
But at least we had better advent calendars, right?
When we were kids, we had really cool ones.
I mean, there weren't these dumb ones with pictures.
I know a friend of mine just had one with pictures. Poor thing.
But we had the ones with chocolate.
Every day a little chocolate inside.
For me it somehow got etched in my mind, "this is the best chocolate in the world."
The very best.
Today, I know. No.
That was the most disgusting chocolate in the world, right?
Hey, if you try that again today, then you'll think, "Eww!"
"That tastes like an exhaust pipe."
"That tastes as if someone's left the wrapper on".
Like "Eww, why...?"
And I think that it only tasted so good for us as kids
because you were never allowed chocolate.
I mean your taste buds weren't very well developed.
Of course it tasted like shit. There was petroleum inside, right?
That was inside those little plastic moulds, of course.
Petroleum. You get high from it, right?
Almost the same as sniffing glue, eating petroleum.
You could say that children used to run on fossil fuels.
Today, you have everything as an advent calendar, right?
There are advent calendars with socks.
With Lego, Playmobil, with jewelry.
Cosmetics. They're actually pretty good.
With perfume, with puppies, dinosaurs and…
with sex toys.
You know those with… Oh, yes.
Ah, you know this? Alright then.
You pretty much get a sex toy every day
behind the door. But I always think,
"Is that really that cool?"
When you wake up first thing in the morning
and open your eyes, drool on the pillow with that disgusting morning breath.
And the first thing you do, "I'll open up this door
and see what I should indulge my body with today."
And on St Nicholas Day, it's a butt plug.
Yeah, on St Nicholas Day there's always something big inside.
With a sex toy advent calendar, you get scared
because you've seen that thing since 1st December.
"Oh, God. What is that?"
And the best thing is you know that everyone who bought this calendar
is going to stick this thing in themselves tonight.
Great experience.
Good, not everyone. Those who already know the calendar wait for the lube.
That comes first at door number eight.
And when you have got so many advent calendars in a family,
then you have to be careful not to get them mixed up.
Otherwise you end up with, "Hey, baby, but that dildo from door number 8, huh?"
"Hey, sorry, but somehow it hurts."
"Yeah, baby, that's the T-Rex from the children's advent calendar."
"Ah, okay, okay. Then, I'll just give it back to them."
Somehow these sex toy calendars are totally stuffy to me.
I don't know why.
Perhaps it is something for somewhat prudish people.
For people who are basically prudish but who are also responsible.
But people who say,
"Usually, I don't like shoving big objects inside me."
"But, well, that was here inside the calendar."
"We bought it, we paid for it…
and today is St Nicholas Day and we have to celebrate."
"It has to be done."
It's not my thing. But I have a friend and she's been longing
for her boyfriend to gift her such a calendar.
She won't buy it herself, it has to be a gift.
She thinks it's great. And one Christmas, he came home and said,
"Baby, I've got you a very special advent calendar."
And she was like, "Hell, yes."
And he said, "It's just the thing
to add a little variety to our relationship
and a bit of oomph into our lives."
That'd be the reason for me to break up with someone
if someone starts to talk about "oomph".
"I would like a bit of oomph in our--" Thank you. That's it for me now.
And then she began wonder, "God, what did he get me?"
"What is it? Get it out."
"Is it something with knots? Is it whips, ball bearings?"
And he gets the thing out. An advent calendar
with tea.
Yes. Also exciting.
Very exciting.
"They're wild mixtures."
"Crazy lemon balm peppermint."
"Ah, five minutes' brew time? Yes, let me brew for five minutes, yes."
"Oh, calming tea."
"Oh, my God, yes. Do me with Earl Grey. Do me Earl."
"Earl Grey"? He must have been the dullest guy ever.
One Shade of Grey.
And my friend is like, "Great."
"Everyone is fucking their brains out at Christmas
and all I get to hang in my cup is a bag of chamomile tea."
"Yep, looks like the T-Rex needs to go back in."
But it's always a bit difficult with Christmas and relationships.
There are lots of problems that can arise.
They say Christmas is celebration of love.
Atheists in particular say that so that they can celebrate it too.
And I can probably speak about this from experience
I went through a Christmas
where I was dumped on Christmas Eve.
Yeah.
That was hard.
For 20 minutes, I managed to act as if nothing had happened.
But then I broke down sobbing under the tree. And that was disaster.
Maybe some of you get it.
That's worse case scenario for a family who, Christmas or not,
don't speak about emotions.
My family was completely overwhelmed.
My brother got up and said,
"Okay, I'm going to the kitchen to make everyone a Moscow Mule."
That was the only rational thing that happened.
My father stood in front of me. He knew he had to do something.
Stood in front of me, looked at me,
lashed out and hit me really hard in the side and said,
"Now c'mon! You're usually such a strong woman."
He might as well have hit a five-year-old and said,
"Now explain to me the theory of relativity, you are usually so clever!"
And then I was already really like, "What is happening?"
And then my mother got up and I'm thinking,
"Finally! She knows what to do. She understands my emotions."
My mother gets up, goes to the piano.
And either due to a subconscious impulse or because she wants to lighten the mood,
she plays the only song she knows by heart.
And it was "My Heart Will Go On".
"Are you fucking serious?"
Okay, she's comparing my love life to the Titanic sinking.
Yeah, how fitting, of course.
And I was lying there under this tree like, "Are you all kidding me?"
I cried into the tree. My sobs flooded the house.
It was so bad.
And on therapeutic advice,
I have tried to process this terrible situation with a song.
Oh, you sad one
Oh, you agonizing
Tearful Christmas time
Boyfriend is lost
He's found someone else
And so I cry, how I cry Oh, what woe
Oh, you sad one
Oh, you agonizing
Tearful Christmas time
Mama plays the piano
Papa hit me here
So I cry
How I cry, oh, what woe
Thank you very much.
I'm feeling better already.
But in that moment I thought, "My God."
While thinking back to the Christmases I had as a child.
Because as a kid, Christmas is always wonderful, right?
You're always happy, it's always really great.
But let's not kid ourselves.
As a kid, the most important thing about Christmas is the presents, right?
I know that sounds a bit immoral, but if you'd have asked me as a kid,
"What's more important to you at Christmas?
That God sacrificed his son for you and all people in the world?"
"Or the new Game Boy?"
It may surprise you to hear
that I said,
"The Game Boy, please."
Yeah, I'm sorry, but what kind of a present is sacrificing your son?
No thanks, man! Are you crazy?
That's way too abstract for a child. That you tell that to children, right?
Dear God sacrificed his son for you.
Dude! For me, that's insane.
That wasn't at all necessary. I don't even know the guy.
It's not the least bit gruesome, is it? That Dear God let his son die.
First, he banishes him from heaven
to some shabby planet where there's just floods, earthquakes and Brussels sprouts.
And as if that wasn't enough, he lets him get crucified.
As a child you're like, "Uh huh, uh huh."
"And that's Dear God."
"Okay, right then, I'll pray to him, sounds cool."
Presents are the most important thing
and that's why the wish lists from me and my brother
got longer and longer every Christmas.
Not because we were materialistic pigs, who couldn't get enough.
But because we never got exactly what we wished for,
instead, it was always something that was similar.
So toys from the flea market, toys other kids have already played with.
Today we call that super sustainable. Really.
But as a kid, you think fuck sustainability.
As a kid, you want the original Barbie from the fucking pink box.
And not a Polish copy that someone has drawn pubes on with a Sharpie.
Not even wax strips will get that off.
And that's why we started writing
very exact descriptions of the presents on our wish lists
because we thought, "This baby Jesus is a bit dumb."
We have to give an exact description. So we didn't just write Barbie,
but the "Original Barbie from Mattel".
"Original packaging. Pink box. Must be sealed."
Once, I took one of those Christmas catalogs you get in the mail
and cut out the things and glued them on the wish list.
If we had had the internet,
I would've added everything to my parents' basket and ordered.
If mother had asked, "What do you want for Christmas?"
"It's coming, they'll ring in a minute. It's sorted. It's gonna be delivered."
Yeah, okay. So maybe I wished for a few unrealistic things.
I know that now.
For example, every year I asked for a pony until I was 17.
Yeah, and I still know how absurd it felt for me as a kid
that I never got one.
I just couldn't understand why.
I thought, "Why can't I have a pony?"
We have a garden. So the pony can graze there.
We have a garden shed,
we can put the lawnmower in the garage and then the pony could live there.
"Why not?"
But I didn't get one.
And I remember that at some point before Christmas, my brother said to me,
"I know what you're gonna get."
And straight away I was like, "A pony?"
"Okay, don't say it."
"How big is it?"
And he was like,
"It's this big."
I was like, "Oh. How does it feel?"
And he was like, "Very soft."
I was like, "Oh, my God, I'm getting a pony. Oh, my God!"
I really fell asleep every night with tears in my eyes.
I thought up until Christmas that I was gonna get a pony.
And what I got for a present was…
bedsheets.
With a pony print.
My brother was a lousy, mean little sadist.
I may have wanted to suffocate him with the bed sheet.
I may have even tried that, but I'm not allowed to talk about it.
I really did wish for a pony. Really.
And that's why I was obsessed with it.
I imagined it, pictured it, my life with a pony.
And maybe every now and then, I'd tell a few people about it.
Just mention that I had a pony.
As a child I didn't take the truth too seriously anyway.
Just tried it. And when you tell other kids you have your own horse…
well, that makes you very popular.
They freaked out of course, "What?" And I thought that was great.
But I figured out it was best
to only con the kids who didn't come to play at my house after school.
So I realized it's best to tell that to the children from my ballet lessons.
And there I could really lay it on thick.
I told them the best stories.
I thought up a beautiful coat color for the pony, a beautiful name.
I took it to tournaments.
This pony could do tricks.
The girls went crazy.
They followed me around. They worshipped the ground I stood on.
Especially the ones who also went horse-riding.
They knew what that meant, to own your own horse.
For them I was Bibi and Tina rolled into one.
And I remember on one afternoon, I had been laying it on really thick.
"Yeah, that's what it's like with my pony" and all the girls were like, "Oh, my God!"
I had a right little entourage behind me.
We came out of the ballet hall. All kids were being picked up
and one girl ran right up to her mother,
"Mom, mom, did you know Caro has a pony?"
And the mother said to me, "Really, you have a pony?"
And I felt so sure I was like, "Yeah, man, that's right. I have a pony."
And she was like, "Awesome! Is it here in Cologne?"
"Yeah, of course."
"Yeah, where is it then?"
And I looked around the parking lot and above the trees I saw the roof of a hall.
"There. There's my pony." And she said,
"Really, your horse is there?" I was like,
"Yep, yep, yep."
And she was like, "Well, that's weird because that's a tennis court."
And I was like, "Mmh, the pony also plays tennis!"
…also plays tennis.
Spoiler alert: I never got a pony.
I had it pretty tough as a child.
But not when I was the one giving presents.
If you are giving presents as a kid,
then you have it pretty easy, right?
As a child, you can give any shit as a present and your parents will go wild.
Really. You can fold a piece of paper and gift to your mother.
"Oh, that's so beautifully folded. Beautiful!"
You don't even really have to make an effort.
You paint a shitty picture of the family where they all look like blow-up aliens.
And they're like, "Ah, it's beautiful!"
But I was too lazy to paint.
So instead I made gift vouchers.
But in the beginning, I didn't think about the time and effort for the gift.
My first voucher was,
"One year's help with the housework".
Yeah. My mother laughed a lot.
And after one day I said, "Ah. Ah, I have made a mistake."
And then I worked my way down to something more realistic.
And then I gave a voucher which said, "Will be nice for a day".
Actually I said, "Will be 'nic' for a day".
The "e" was missing.
That was also found in the box, "Will be nic for one day". Should do.
But when you think about it, it could also be interpreted as
"Hello, mom, I will be nice for one day a year."
That means for the other 364 days a year, I won't be.
But in leap years, it'll be 365 days.
That wasn't a present, that was effectively blackmail.
But mothers are not too fussy.
You can give them any voucher as a present.
They think everything is great.
I think that's a kind of self-protection.
That you're always happy.
All mothers say, "Thanks, that's so nice of you. So unnecessary."
I really think it's self-protection
because there's an issue we tend to ignore.
Yeah, due to a certain reluctance.
There's a thing called
"The Gender Present Gap".
Gender pay gap.
We all know about that. Women get paid less than men for the same work.
But women still get fewer presents.
Men and children get the best presents in the world for Christmas.
Why? Because women have been thinking about it since July.
They write out lists. They have notes on their phone.
That's why kids and men get such cool presents
like a telescope or a bungee rope.
Or a knife-sharpening-course or something.
And women get almost nothing. When women get something, it's something practical.
Like a hoover attachment.
That's what mommy gets, a hoover attachment.
Not even kidding. A friend of mine got that as a present.
I think that there are certain things that don't belong in wrapping paper.
And one of those is a hoover attachment.
Yeah but it's mega-ergonomic and super practical.
God! Toilet paper is also super practical
but I don't give that as a Christmas present.
A hoover--
Women just get practical things, if anything.
Please ask a woman you know, a mother
or family manager, what they got for Christmas last year.
I bet you'll hear something like,
"Well, let me think, my little one painted me a beer mat."
And in the post
I received a bottle opener from our bank's customer service.
Oh, man, that really is something.
That's just great.
That is a crying injustice.
Most of the women I know
would have deserved a shopping cart full of presents.
They are, after all the producers of the whole Christmas thing, right?
Except that in comparison to film producers,
they don't take all the money home.
Yeah.
They produce Christmas.
If there was an Oscar award ceremony for Christmas, Christmas festivities,
then every woman would be thanked.
"Thank you. Without you, it wouldn't have been possible, Margaret."
Because they do everything.
They don't just make sure that everyone gets presents.
Without the women, half the family wouldn't know that Christmas is happening.
Because they also tell everyone where, how and when it will be celebrated.
I have a friend who has her own business, as well as three kids.
I saw on her to-do list a point, "Organize Christmas". It was one point.
One point on her fucking list. "Yeah, I'll do it on the side, fuck it."
Women take care of everything.
The party, the decorations, the food.
Meanwhile they also have to worry about keeping peace in the family.
Without them, relatives would fight,
probably an uncle with a cousin or something.
Without anyone realizing it, they prevent fist-fights by handing out schnapps.
All the while looking like a bombshell.
And the greatest unrecognized achievement is of course
that whole time they have to act
like it's no problem whatsoever.
Actually the highlight of Christmas shouldn't be the present-giving,
but honoring the woman of the house.
But that's not the case, and if these women dare to say,
"Oh, guys, it's too stressful for me right now, it's too much."
"Oh, mom!"
"She's going crazy."
"Just chill. Relax for goodness' sake. It's Christmas!"
Whatever. Perhaps it's our own fault, us girls, because
before Christmas, often we say, with a tinge of panic,
we say things like,
"Hey you, this year, let's not give each other presents, right?"
We won't exchange presents. That sounds easy at first
but the problem is with these different definitions of nothing.
What does nothing mean exactly in this sentence?
The fact is, for men, "nothing" means nothing.
Nothing as in nothing. Nothing whatsoever.
And for women nothing is "Nothing?"
"Apart from a little something."
"Well, nothing big
maybe a little something that expresses your eternal love for me."
"And that will maybe bring a tear to my eye as I unwrap it."
"But that's nothing."
That's a different definition.
Whatever. Perhaps it's just logical that there's this gender present gap.
Because the church has a long tradition of misogyny
and Christmas is all about traditions, right?
So it's just a natural consequence.
It started with the fact that the Catholics invented the perfect family
with no women whatsoever.
Right? The Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit.
Three boys. Doesn't sound particularly Catholic at first, right?
It's just an apartment share, nothing sexual.
But at least there are no women to bother us.
Of course, in the history of Catholicism, there are a few women
but unfortunately, they're all lousy characters.
It all started with Eve. She got us into deep shit.
Ate the apple. Got us all thrown out of paradise.
You could also say, "Hey, Eve was canny, she was curious."
"She looks beyond her nose, she wasn't a yes-woman
she was inquisitive."
And as far as I am aware, Adam also took a bite of the apple.
But with him it wasn't a problem.
Yeah, okay so they both got punished by being thrown out of paradise
but it was Eve who was punished with the original sin, right?
And not only Eve, but all the women who followed.
So we're all carrying her sin.
Which means unbearable pain while giving birth
and bleeding from our genitals every month.
Yeah, man, we get it.
Little bit of an overreaction.
And maybe the gender present gap is consequently just a punishment from God.
And I don't know, I always thought my aunt was talking shit.
My aunt always said,
"Oh, I have never got cool presents like my brother", that's my uncle.
"He also didn't have to help around the house as much."
And my Dad always said, "Fucking bullshit."
We all said, "Yeah, nonsense."
Then, at some point, we were looking at some old slides with our grandma.
From the '60s, Christmas with tons of tinsel.
And you see my uncle in the foreground
with his brand new racing bike, beaming from ear to ear.
In the background my aunt sobbing, with a chocolate bar in her hand.
Really. It probably wasn't even the good one with petroleum.
My aunt had it pretty good, actually.
At least, she didn't get any embarrassing presents.
My cousin once got given an epilator for Christmas
from our grandma in front of everyone.
To be fair to my grandma, she didn't know what it was.
My aunt had wrapped it up for my cousin.
Alas thank God my aunt explained what it was to everyone.
"Yeah, yeah, she's just turned 13
but she already has such long black hairs on her legs."
My grandma was like, "Hey, what kind of thing is that for shaving legs?"
"What kind of newfangled thing is that?"
I really ask myself, at what point do you become a grandma?
When are you a grandma or grandpa?
I'm not taking about having grandchildren, but in terms of personality.
At the moment, I'm normal. I wear colorful clothes.
But at some point, I will be a grandma and only wear…
beige.
Yeah, but not Kim Kardashian beige, but health beige.
When does that happen?
I mean at the moment I still have my own style, I hope.
But at some point that will disappear and then I will dress like a grandma.
When does this happen? How does it happen?
And the best thing is that every grandma in every generation looks the same, right?
When I was a child, the grandmas looked exactly the same as they do today.
Always a pleated skirt, a glittery sweater and orthopedic shoes.
Exactly like that.
Does it sneak upon you gradually?
You know? That you just start with beige shoes you think, "Ah."
"That's my kind of thing."
And then it starts moving higher and higher up. Beige pants perhaps?
Or is it more of a formal process? You get a letter from the council
and then, you open it and you say,
"Oh, Manfred, it's time. We have to wear beige now."
Then you have to take all your colorful sneakers, caps and things
and hand them in to the council.
And then you get a pensioner's vest to wear.
With like twenty pockets.
But what do you do with all the empty pockets?
Where do you get the stuff to put inside them?
Maybe you get a voucher so you can go to Müller's senior outfitters.
Then you get the pensioner's starter kit.
"So, pensioner's pocket content."
"Here, a handful of cough sweets."
"Out of date, of course. Half of them without the wrapper."
Then a handkerchief and a shop receipt from 2007.
But you still have 20 more pockets. What do you put in them?
Well, you put some sort of wrapped-up food into every single one, of course.
The type of food you put in a Tupperware.
Even eggs.
It's not as if nature has prepacked the eggs perfectly.
Then you put them in a Tupperware and only get them out on ICE trains.
And that's where you eat the eggs.
I recently saw a group of elderly women sitting in the train
all cracking open their eggs.
And I thought, "Gosh!" Somehow, I don't see grandmas anymore.
In my experience, older women
you only really see them on ICE trains or at family occasions.
But when you turn on the TV?
Every female presenter over 40 is replaced.
In films, there are loads of young women, of course, but older women?
You can forget Instagram.
Somehow it's like they have been sucked out of society.
They're somehow just gone.
As a child, I imagined that was what dying was like.
That you just sort of fade out.
I imagined it a little differently.
My grandma always measured my height with a mark on the door.
And always said, "Now, you're this tall."
She would then tell me, "I used to be taller before."
As a kid, I was like, "Huh? How does that work?"
"You grow, but you can't get smaller."
She said, "It's true. In old age, you shrink, you get smaller."
I was like, "Oh, yeah?"
That then started turning the cogs in my brain.
I thought, "Ah, that's what getting old is like."
Getting old is shrinking again and again.
So grandma will keep getting smaller and smaller.
And then at some point, she'll live in a doll's house.
Then she'll live in a Lego house.
Then, when we can't find her anymore,
we'll be hoovering, "Oof, something rattled."
Oh, no.
Grandma.
I thought that then you're dead.
When you get sucked up.
When my grandma really died.
I was still in church thinking the coffin is way too big.
Or are there a couple of grannies inside?
That's the last time I went to church. When my grandmother died.
I mean, I'm not what you'd call a regular church-goer.
But I think that Christmas is still…
The church is always full for mass at Christmas.
Otherwise there's no one there, even if there wasn't Corona.
But the church is always packed out.
You get the feeling they've been reserving their places since November.
"No, no one can sit here. These seats are for our family."
Packed to the rafters.
Hey, if I had a show
that was empty for the rest of the year, not a soul
but then packed out once a year,
I would say, "Guys, we're gonna give the performance of our lives."
"Then, they'll come every day."
"We're gonna entertain them, they won't know what's hit them."
But the Catholic church is like, "Yeah. Or not."
"No. Instead let's have the kids perform a play, which is way too long."
"Which everyone already knows."
"And everyone should speak really quietly."
"In a room with ceilings that are too high."
"Oh, and everyone should have their backs to the audience."
And then we'll get a gentle woman with a cheeky short haircut to read.
She'll read a gentle text out loud. From the Bible, where you think,
"Even the best book in the world sounds shit, if you read it like that."
"And it came to pass in those days
that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus
that all the world should be taxed.
And this taxing was first made
when Cyrenius was governor of Syria."
No.
And then there's the priest. With each second, you notice that
he hates kids.
He hates kids. He just pretends.
He would love to throw Finn-Friedrich out of the first row.
Because he is interrupting the sermon
and hitting his neighbor's head with the hymn book.
But he can't do that because he has to say stuff like
"Christmas is about the miracle of childbirth and love for a child!"
"So let the children come to me!"
But what he'd really like to do is grab Finn-Friedrich and say,
"Shut your mouth, boy. Or I'll smack you with the candlestick."
"If you're not quiet
then Knecht Ruprecht will come and stick long needles in your eyes."
Of course…
In the Catholic church you have to just be thankful that the priest only hates kids.
That's the lesser of two evils.
Well, of course…
Surprise!
People don't really like going to church, because the whole Christmas story
isn't really relevant to our lives anymore.
You sit there as a young person and think,
"What the hell is going on?"
I mean if the Christmas story happened today,
then everything would be completely different.
I mean, it starts with the procreation.
Mary and God would probably have met each other on Tinder.
I assume.
Everything would be different.
As if Joseph and Mary would have slept in a barn. Fat chance!
They would have checked into some cool loft from Airbnb
in the completely gentrified center of Bethlehem, obviously.
For sure.
As if they wouldn't check out a stable they saw on a hotel comparison site
"Only one star? No, no way."
As if the three wise men
would have come in person all that way just to give the presents.
They would have just sent them with Amazon, right?
Already wrapped as a present.
Where you pay a €79.80 surcharge
just to get them packed in those crappy cloth bags.
That's really the easiest way to say, "I have money and I don't care about you."
That's how it would be. Better to just give any crap as a present, right?
We always do a joke Secret Santa, me and my friends.
Joke Secret Santa is the same as normal Secret Santa
except you actually admit how shit the gifts are.
We do that every year at Christmas
but unfortunately, the day before Christmas Eve.
Which means that I can't really remember the last few Christmas Eves too well.
Because I always have such a bad hangover on Christmas Eve
that I can't remember.
But we always have to do the joke Secret Santa on the 23rd
because that's the only time everyone is in Cologne.
Nowadays some of them live in China or Hamburg or God knows where.
So we can only do it then.
At some point, it just got out of hand.
We started about 20 years ago.
There were six of us and we did the Secret Santa at one of our homes.
Then over the years,
more and more people joined us and it just grew and grew over time.
Then there came a point where no one wanted to host it at their home anymore.
"Man, I can't renovate the floor again. Last year, it was so bad."
And then at some point, we started to rent a location on the 23rd.
To get a tree. Soon, we had doormen, a schedule
and it became a fixed event, with invitations.
We had teams to decorate the tree and to take it down.
There were even penalties if you forgot to bring your Secret Santa.
Then we got really drunk.
We got so drunk. And every year, I knew that Christmas was going to be hell.
I have to try and nurse my drinks.
I had to try and pace myself with all this alcohol.
But I just couldn't do it.
There are people who drink water in between.
They drink water. What psychos! How do they do it?
How can you be so in control?
After every shot of booze. "First, some water."
"I always do it like this, a beer then water."
Wow. I always try.
I always think, "Okay, now I'm gonna drink water. Water."
"Definitely gonna get some water."
Then I head to the bar to get some, "Water, water, water",
but when I'm in front of the bar, "Beer! Fuck it."
Then…
Then, at some point, we're listening to Rage Against the Machine
and there's a merry mosh pit.
Then everyone is bouncing around,
everything breaks and you sometimes end up injured.
There were Christmases where I sat there with a black eye
and my brother with a big lump on his forehead.
Sitting opposite our grandmother at the table and grandma looks and says,
"Did you hit each other? And at Christmas!"
And we're like, "Yeah, we both fell over yesterday."
All of us, all my friends, are always so hungover on Christmas Eve.
That's why we made our own version of a well-known Christmas song.
Just like every year
It happened once again
Knees down on the ground
Vomit hanging from my chin
I can hardly move
Can barely stand the pain
Crawling on all fours
The whole way through the house
Parents waiting cheerful
The goose is fully cooked
I'll just keep drinking
Until next year
You're welcome to use that one.
But…
Drinking at Christmas is, of course, only the culmination of the season.
It starts much, much earlier of course.
Throughout advent, you have to get drunk at Christmas markets.
Every moron wants to go with you to the Christmas market.
"We have to go to the Christmas market,
we really have to." Suddenly, you're stressing about appointments
because everyone wants to go with you to the Christmas market.
It's like peer pressure.
"We've got to do it before Christmas. Got to go to the markets!"
In Cologne, when people say, "C'mon, we're going to the Christmas market."
Then you have to ask, "Which one?"
We've got hundreds of Christmas markets in Cologne.
We've got more Christmas markets than parking spaces in Cologne.
And then you have to drink a lot of mulled wine.
Who actually invented that?
You stand there in the cold
with your cup
and with the first gulp, you immediately burn your mouth.
Your tongue is numb, which isn't a bad thing
because as soon as it cools down by one degree
then it tastes like cold feet.
It tastes just like a hangover feels the next day.
So, slowly, you have that taste in your mouth.
Then I'm standing there already with this half-cold thing, "Ew".
Then after just two seconds, someone comes from the group and says,
"Another round, yeah? I'll get another round. Give me your cups."
And you're standing there like, "Fuck. The guy is like a debt collector."
"C'mon, c'mon."
Because he wants to get his fucking deposit back.
I once tipped mine into the snow.
It looked like I threw up blood on the snow, "Everything okay?"
"Yeah."
Or you have to chug that shit.
God didn't intend for mulled wine to be chugged.
That's why he created it scalding hot.
Of course you then get drunk from mulled wine.
Which is really a disgusting kind of drunkenness.
I always notice when I've had too much mulled wine
because I think, "I could go for some slimy garlic mushrooms right about now."
The rest of the year, I wouldn't give them the time of day.
But at the Christmas market, "Oh, garlic mushrooms."
Right?
Or when you've had enough mulled wine, then for me I slowly start
to think all the crap on the stands is really cool.
You think it's actually really beautiful.
"It's beautiful."
"Wow. It's all made out of felt."
Felt. The rest of the year I couldn't give a toss about felt
but at the Christmas market, "Felt. Oh."
"Felt shoes too, amazing."
Everything is full of knick-knacks.
You buy them and then they just lay around the house.
You think, "Great, I need all of that."
It's like the home shopping channels back in the day.
I don't know how they do it.
Back then, when you switched it on, you were like,
"Hey, no way!"
There's no reason in the world why I would ever
need to buy a lint fryer.
But then you look at it for ten minutes and think, "Man, I need that thing."
I have to fry my lint. All of it.
It's like that at the Christmas market too, "I need that."
But actually, I really need it.
Decoration from the Christmas market.
I have personally depended on it, if I want everything to be festive.
I can't do it myself. Doesn't work.
I can look at as much Pinterest as I want, but it doesn't work.
I know there are people who can just do it.
There are people who, if you give them just a hot glue gun,
a couple of dried leaves and a bit of material
and they craft, no, they somehow conjure up floral decorations.
You'd think the photographer from Beautiful Homes will be here in a sec
to do an 8-page story for Vogue.
Fuck me! What's that about?
The last thing I conjured up from dried leaves was definitely not legal.
It looks so shit when I decorate.
Really. With me,
it always looks like a decoration, which was beautiful, fell off the table.
And someone swept it up.
Where people walk by and say,
"Hey, Chief you should have a look at this."
"A candle and a feather. What happened here?"
Or like Black Stories, do you know that?
A candle and a feather lying on the floor. What happened?
Was there a break-in? Was there an explosion?
No, Caro was doing crafts. Ah, okay. Cool.
At some point, I called my mother and told her.
I said, "Mom, I'm hopeless when it comes to decorating."
My mom was like, "Yeah, that's great."
"Huh?"
"No, I think it's good that there are some things you can't do."
"Yeah, great."
"No, it's a good trait to have."
"To be able to say when there is something you can't do. It's good."
You can't do it too often though
otherwise it sounds like you're fishing for compliments.
Just like in school, everyone had a friend like
"Oh, God, I definitely gonna get a 'U'. Oh, what another 'A'?"
"Oh, God."
That's how I always get given cookies at Christmas.
I always get given cookies.
Where you can already see, wow, these are super good cookies.
And you realize that the person who gave them
just wants to hear how good they are.
I always get given them with the sentence
"Yes, but this year, they turned out really bad."
"Turned out really bad." You think?
"To whom did you give the cookies which did turn out well?"
First of all, how can cookies not turn out well?
It's fat and sugar. It's always delicious.
You can't combine fat and sugar in a way
that tastes bad.
That's why it's always over the top, when you bite a cookie and go
"Oh, delicious."
Yeah, of course it's delicious.
It's a cookie. What else would it be, magnetic?
What did you think?
Cookies!
I always take all the cookies I get given, I get a lot
and put them on a huge plate of cookies.
Then people always ask, "Did you bake those yourself?"
At some point, I started to say, "Yep."
"With my pony."
"My pony and I, we baked all these cookies."
"No problem. Do it every year. Standard Wednesday people."
The problem is when you have someone with allergies there
and they ask, "Do they contain nuts?"
"Yeah."
"Yeah, probably not."
"Try one and ask me again in ten minutes…
if you're still alive." No, not really.
But food is super important at Christmas, right?
Christmas dinner is the highlight.
For everyone it has to be the best food in the world.
There are only two camps.
The first is Team Sausage and Potato Salad.
The other one is Team Dead Bird.
Goose, duck or turkey.
Owls. Whatever else there is.
As a kid, I definitely would have been Team Potato Salad
because that's quick to prepare.
For kids, it's a fucking chicane.
This bloody long meal. What the hell?
On Christmas, when you've already been to church,
you want presents. Why do you have to stuff yourself for ages first?
Usually pasta and sauce, or sauce and pasta will do.
But at Christmas, you sit at the table for three hours.
We always had leftovers.
Okay, so we didn't call it leftovers. We said, "raclette." We had raclette.
It was a stroke of genius by my mother, she didn't have to prepare anything
just tear open packets.
The disadvantage for us as kids was that it took ages before my dad was full.
Because he always said, "This isn't anything proper."
When my father said,
"This isn't anything proper", he meant that it wasn't meat. No meat.
Of course with raclette, there is only salami, ham, etc.
Not any real meat.
As a kid, you're already full up after half a piece of melted cheese.
You sit there with your hot face at the table, rocking back and forth,
"When do we get to open presents?"
But you have to wait until your father is full.
You've already waited to open the 24 doors of the advent calendar.
And now you have to wait for your father to make 24 pans disappear.
At Christmas, we always play games after food.
That's become a well-loved tradition over the last few years.
We always play a game.
It may sound a bit weird today, but…
It's called "Your Mother Top Trumps".
It's a sort of like Top Trumps, but you just play it with mothers.
You have to outdo each other
in terms of weight, hair, and a number of unsupervised children.
Then you have "Your mom" phrases and everyone has to decide
who has the funniest phrase and you can use those to out-trump people.
The game in itself isn't actually that cool.
But my brother and I laughed our asses off
about the way our parents read out these "Your mom" phrases.
Whenever my father read his phrases out,
he would look straight at my brother to see if it was funny.
Because sometimes he doesn't get the joke.
He sits there at Christmas and says,
"Your mother gets hit more often than the door of the job center."
"Was it good?"
"Good."
My mother didn't really get it either.
She read them like a dedicated Cologne church wife.
She reads like,
"Your mom shits on the carpet,
sticks pretzel sticks in it and says the hedgehog lives here now."
It's too much.
You aren't at your parents as often as you used to be.
A couple of years ago though,
I was living at my parents for a bit, due to a "situation". And…
I was terrified about it
because I thought we're gonna bash our heads in, it will be horrible.
It was actually a wonderful time. It was great.
We spent a lot of time drawing, we had breakfast together.
You sit in the same place you always sat at as a child.
There were five different types of sausage.
Sometimes I just opened the fridge just to count all the sausages.
None of them were off, none of them had furled up. Nothing.
That in itself was so fascinating.
All of my things were washed, ironed and sewed up.
All of my tops have a hole here. That's just how it is.
I just can't wait for someone to hand me a pair of scissors
when the label starts to itch.
At some point, I lose my shit
and then I've ripped everything to shreds.
And my mother sewed everything up.
But there were also moments when I realized,
"Ah, yes."
"We've really left them alone for a long time."
For example, at one point, I wanted to take a bath.
So I was on the first floor and I had just run the bath water.
My mother heard that from downstairs and ran up, screaming on the way,
"Do you want to take a bath? Do you want to take a bath? Sorry, you can't."
And I was like, "Eh? Why not?"
And she came inside, "Yeah, you can't do that."
"You can't take a bath. The water's too cold for that."
"Your dad set it up that way."
"You can only shower, you can't take a bath."
And I have to say that
I was totally confused
because a couple of years earlier,
my parents had switched to geothermal energy.
They paid so much money for this geothermal heating.
My dad had worked it out, he'd done the math.
As soon as my parents turned 90,
then it would finally pay off.
I even remember how it was built. A bore drill arrived.
I thought they're gonna drill for dinosaurs. What the hell?
They drilled a hole in my parent's front garden.
I'm no expert on geology or heating
but the way I understood geothermal
is that they drill through to the Earth's fucking core.
To me, geothermal heating means my parents have a lava-flat rate.
The water is literally boiling at their place all the time.
Why the fuck shouldn't you use it?
No, my father found out that you can save a few cents
if you turn it down a little bit.
And I was astounded.
I stood in front of my mother and said, "Wait a second."
"But you really like having a bath."
"You can't take a bath? But you love baths!"
My mother is the queen of bath water.
Really, when I was a child, she was always taking baths.
And she said,
"Well, when I want a bath, I get the pasta pot, the big one."
"Then I boil some water."
I go, "And then you walk up the fucking stairs with a pot of boiling water?"
"You take baths like they did during the war?"
What kind of weird situation is that?
"You can't. Your dad set it up like that."
And then, my dad hears our conversation.
I hear him shout,
"Yeah, yeah, it's fine, I'll adjust it, then!" But angrily.
And I go, "Why is he angry?"
And with whom? With us? With himself? With the heating, the lava? No idea.
That's so mad.
You think, "Wow, my parents are so weird."
"I love them, but they're weird."
I find it so funny. But as a teenager, it's super embarrassing.
All of your own family make you think, "Oh, God. You're all so strange."
As you get older, you think,
"My God. You're so strange."
"You're freaks, but you're my freaks. Somehow, it's cool."
That's why there are weird traditions in every family.
But with us, for example, it's like this.
When we set up the nativity, it gets put together on the 6th of December.
Then it stands there, with crib in the stable.
But for us, Jesus isn't born yet.
Because, of course, it isn't quite the 24th, yet. We're very logical.
That's why until he is born, Jesus lies behind the crib.
Other babies lie in the womb but he is just in the back of a dusty cupboard.
And at some point, the inevitable happened.
Jesus was gone.
Don't know if the cat ate him or what.
Or if we had hoovered him up? Oh! He's with grandma in heaven.
No idea where he went.
Anyway, we, of course, had to replace him.
I mean you can't have an empty crib on Christmas.
How creepy would that be?
Someone has to be Jesus!
And then we started putting toy figures in there.
One year, we had a Playmobil construction worker.
Really cool. He had a mustache and a shovel in his hand.
Then, one year, I had Polly Pocket, I managed to get that one through.
More diversity in the Jesus sector.
Then a Happy Hippo from a Kinder egg. That was also good.
Then, at some point, we landed by super heroes.
I mean it's hard to follow in Jesus's footsteps.
You've got to have something to offer.
It was definitely a job for Batman.
Batman was Jesus for three years.
I mean c'mon. Gotham, Bethlehem, what's the difference?
And that's somehow more in the spirit of Jesus, this variety.
Anyone can spread Jesus's message. The message of love.
Why not Batman? And for me, that is Christmas.
Not these old stories from the Bible,
but what you experience with your friends and your freaks at home.
Everyone has their own, special moment.
Christmas is different for everyone.
Never mind if you drink yourself under the table at Christmas.
Or if you give your kids cheap Barbies from Poland as presents.
Or if a brown hedgehog lives in your home on the carpet.
For me, it's only Christmas when Batman is lying in the crib.
Silent night
Holy night
Batman laughs at God's Son
Jesus lies somewhere behind the cupboard
Where no one ever found him again
Batman the savior is here
Silent night
Holy night
Homemade cookies
In the cupboard some crap made of felt
Your breath stinks of garlic mushrooms
Just keep your mouth closed
Keep your mouth closed
Merry Christmas! That's it folks. Get home safe!
Thank you for coming, enjoy the festivities!
Gift yourself something nice!
Drink something proper!
Silent night
Holy night
I hope you all had fun
Now go out and have a great time
Remember that baby Jesus Can see everything
Folks, the show is over
I'm gonna ride my pony home
Merry Christmas!
Thank you!