By Jeremy Brown

Hudson’s annual Christkindlmarkt took place at Clocktower Green in downtown Hudson on Dec. 12-13 this year; the event was scheduled to continue into Dec. 14, but due to frigid temperatures and a lake effect snow warning, organizers cancelled the event for Sunday. 

Christkindlmarkt is presented by Hudson-Landsberg Sister City, a non-profit organization aimed at fostering Hudson's relationship with its sister city, Landsberg am Lech in Germany. The organization's objective is to educate the Hudson community about German culture and to raise scholarship funds for Hudson students who have a career path in German studies. Christkindlmarkt and the annual Biergarten event in August are the organization’s main fundraising events. 

Hudson Community Relations Manager Jena Stasik said Christkindlmarkt is a coveted community event that attracts people from near and far. 

“This is a very well attended event, probably one of our biggest in the city,” Stasik said. “There’s a lot of festive food, live entertainment. It’s a really magical experience.”

This year’s market featured a sundry of craft vendors, German fare, music and an abundance of children's activities.

An unexpected display of fireworks lit up the sky on the opening night of the event. Organizers aren’t sure who set them off. 

“It was just a magical surprise that was added to the evening as far as we were concerned,” Christkindlmarkt Committee Chairperson Shelley Sedlacek said.

Musical guests for the weekend included the Hudson High School Choir, the Hudson Community Chorus, who sang Christmas carols, and polka accordionist Rick Godic.

There were 35 vendors at the market this year, which Sedlacek said were curated to ensure that the market had an atmosphere reminiscent of an authentic German/European Christkindlmarkt.

This year’s Christkindlmarkt featured unique German flavors, such as The Original Strudel Factory’s apple, cherry and cheese strudel; Reinecker’s Bakery’s baked goods made with 300-year-old recipes brought to the U.S. by master German baker Richard J. Reinecker; and The Chimney Stack’s traditional Eastern European chimney stack cakes. Other food vendors at the event included Pink Piggy BBQ, Totally Nutz, Nona’s and Daisy Pops.

Till Family Farms was among the vendors at Christkindlmarkt this year. The farm, which was established in 2023, is dedicated to making all-natural products. That ranges from 100% beeswax candles made with Northeast Ohio beeswax to essential oil soaps to caramel candy made with local Northeast Ohio honey, vanilla extract and pectin-free, old-world artisanal jams. Their basic fruit-flavored jams are made with whole fruit, organic cane sugar and organic lemon juice, and they also make alcohol-infused jams in fun flavors using vanilla, caramel and spicy ingredients. 

Jennifer Till, co-owner of Till Family Farms, said her husband John’s grandmother, Mary Wasenko, who emigrated to the U.S. from Slovakia, taught him how to make artisanal jam when he was a child.

“This all started with my husband's grandmother, who taught him how to make jam. She taught him how to do it the old-school way,” Jennifer Till said. “Grandma basically ran the kitchen and showed her grandkids how to preserve foods and use what you had and what you can do with everything and not be wasteful. They grew everything that they needed in their yards and, during the summer, whatever they couldn’t refrigerate or store before it spoiled, they made into a jam.” 

Wasenko passed away in 1984, but her old-school recipe continues to thrive at Till Family Farms.

Till Family Farms also produces pasture-raised, non-GMO, soy-free chicken eggs and meat and is a year-round vendor at the Cuyahoga Valley Farmers Market in Peninsula.

There were several activities on the roster for children, most of which took place at Christkindlmarkt’s children’s tent, known as the kinderplatz. Activities included balloon art, crafts, German storytelling and temporary tattoos, as well as a kinder scavenger hunt, which required the children to journey out into the market in search of hidden images of Krampus. Upon completion of the hunt, each child received a prize bag with German chocolates and a miniature toy nutcracker. 

“Everything we do is complimentary. We don’t charge for admission; we don’t charge for our scavenger hunt and the prizes,” Sedlacek said. “That’s something that we just feel like we’re sharing holiday spirit with the people that come to visit us, and, in turn, we hope they support our event so we can continue to do the good things that we do for our organization. The only thing you pay for is food and if you want gluhwein – that's hot spiced wine – we have German Christmas ale and then we have hot mulled cider. We also have German food, like strudel and bratwurst and baked goods.”

St. Nicholas and Krampus were also available for photo opportunities on both days of the event. 

Sedlacek said one of the main goals of the Hudson-Landsberg Sister City organization is to create gemütlichkeit, which is a German word that describes a state of being that encompasses a feeling of friendliness, merriment and coziness while enjoying simple pleasures, such as partaking in food and drink in a social setting in a leisurely fashion.

“We’ve always said one of our goals is we just want to create a Hallmark movie memory for our town. We want people to walk in and feel nothing but good things. We want to provide these wonderful feelings,” Sedlacek said. “That’s the way we look at it. When we started this, we all said to each other, we just want to create gemütlichkeit in our community.”