Pretzel Sunday

Have you ever given any thought as to why pretzels exist?

Luxembourg and America do pretzels entirely differently. In America, pretzels are mostly crispy and sold in every grocery store. They inhabit bowls of questionable cleanliness in bars all across the country. Desperate airline passengers nibble on them. When people gather to watch football on TV, pretzels are the Vice Presidents of the snack world--ready just in case something happens to the chicken hot wings. Special pretzel stores in malls sell chewy ones dredged in yellow processed cheese; sometimes dipped into mustard. Other special pretzel stores in malls coat them in multiple layers of chocolate and colorful sprinkles.

Most of all, there’s no story or tradition around them. Pretzels are like pigeons. They are nothing special; they just ARE.

Well, in Luxembourg, pretzels are fraught with meaning. Sure, one can still find meaningless crispy pretzels in the grocery stores. It’s the seasonal pretzel--that comes around only once a year--that is so interesting.

To set the stage, Lent is a 40-day stretch of sadness and repentance before the rejoicing of Easter morning. It starts the day after Mardi Gras (literally “Fat Tuesday”), on Ash Wednesday (February 25th in 2009). During Lent, early Christians were not allowed to eat any rich foods, and particularly eggs, butter, milk, meat or cheese during this time. They could eat fish and bread made from flour and water, however. (Which is not so coincidentally the ingredients of a pretzel).

The Lenten pretzel tradition has Roman Catholic roots that date back over a thousand years. According to The History of Science and Technology, by Bryan Bunch and Alexander Hellemans, "...an Italian monk [in 610 A.D.] invents pretzels as a reward to children who learn their prayers. He calls the strips of baked dough, folded to resemble arms crossing the chest, 'pretiola' ("little rewards")". Another source maintains that they called it ‘Bracellae’, the Latin word for “little arms.” Over time the pronunciation turned into ‘bretzel’.

Are we to believe these stories? You make the call; I won’t. However, to stoke the fires of discussion a little more, the Sunday before Ash Wednesday I gave my wife Cammy a pretzel. It wasn’t any old pretzel. It was about a foot across, had the texture of a sweet roll and was topped generously with white frosting and sliced almonds. It was...a romantic pretzel.

What possessed me to do this? The fact that it was “Pretzel Sunday” in Luxembourg. Apparently a tradition that arose around suffering has morphed into a romantic tradition. According to accepted practice, the boy (Eric) gives the girl (Cammy) a pretzel on Pretzel Sunday. If she approves of my pretzel and my romantic attentions, then she is obliged to give me an egg on Easter Sunday. It could be a real egg or a chocolate one. It could be plain or richly decorated. It’s up to her. To add even more confusion, in leap years the girl and the boy switch roles! (Sort of a Sadie Hawkins arrangement, so the boys had better be on their toes).

As Easter approaches the pressure mounts. To make things more dramatic, I shall continue the discussion using Rumsfeldic Questioning (kind of like Socratic Questioning, but more recent and with goofy epithets included):

Will I get an egg? Good golly, I should hope so.
Will it be out of the carton? Perhaps.
Could it be hardboiled? Possibly, for gosh sakes.
Might it be dyed a pretty color? My stars, wouldn’t that just be dilly!
Could it be a fancy chocolate egg? You bet.
And what does it really mean either way? Heavens to Betsy, who on God’s green earth really knows?

All I know is that everybody knows that you’re supposed to do it, but nobody (I’ve talked to) knows why. It’s enough to drive a man to drink. Which is what a lot of Luxembourgish men do. Starting at about 9 o’clock in the morning, when the malls open. Packs of them cluster around the little circular bars in the main mall walkways, like gamblers around a particularly generous blackjack table. When they are in full swing, there is much jovial chitchat and hoisting of beer. I call them the “Bofferding Boys”, after the local brewery.

But I digress.

On the surface, Pretzel Sunday sounds silly, maybe even sacrilegious. However, I would argue that it is far less so than the Easter Bunny. Or the gifting of live ducklings and bunnies, soon to be abandoned (or eaten). Not to mention plastic Easter baskets lined with plastic grass filled with the sugary horror of Cadbury eggs and the marshmallowy monstrosities known as Peeps.

At least pretzel and egg drama has a Christian origin and celebrates love and romance, instead of just celebrating the dollar.