St. Barbara’s Day

Today is another one of “those” holidays during Advent season that I am not familiar with.

As the story goes, Barbara was the daughter of a rich merchant, Dioscuros, in what is present day Turkey. Dioscuros decided to lock Barbara in a tower with only 2 windows while he took a journey, in order to protect Barbara’s ”innocence”. During his absence, the tower now showed 3 windows. Many saw it as a sign of a miracle as the third window was seen to symbolize the sign of the Holy Trinity; Barbara was baptized by a priest during her father’s absence.

As the legend continues, this was all done without Dioscuros’s consent; thus, Barbara was accused, tortured, and condemned to death. As a branch of a cherry tree had gotten caught in Barbara’s dress when she was locked in the dungeon awaiting her execution, Barbara watered it with the water from her drinking cup. On the day of her execution which the angry father had personally made (in the winter of 306), the branch bloomed.

From this comes story comes the notion of Barbarazweig, the custom of bringing branches into the house on December 4th to bloom on Christmas. In some areas of Germany, St. Barbara's Day is also the day to bake Kletzenbot (a fruit cake).