Christkindlmarket in Chicago a Holiday Favorite
December 13, 2025
In the Midwest, many of us hope for wintry weather for the holidays. This year we have had cold and (some) snow since Thanksgiving and like it. The skies are gray, but a drive from St. Louis this week through the windswept fields and windmill farms of Illinois was pleasant, as was the cinnamon-scented fellow at the front desk of a River North hotel in Chicago, who welcomed us to town. The view from our high room was down State Street, that great street, to the Marina Towers in light snow. The liveliness of the city serves as a terminal rebuttal to all this nonsense about war zones.
A couple of stops south on the Red Line, the Christkindlmarket filled Daley Plaza, the main purpose of our trip. The market—dozens of vendors selling German food, drink, and handicrafts at “the most authentic traditional holiday market of its kind outside of Europe”—is named for the Christkind, “a fairy-like being dressed in gold and white robes with a crown upon her golden locks, [whose] folklore dates back to the 1500s and…still today…is the bearer of gifts to most children in German-speaking countries, much like Santa Claus is in the United States.”
The Christkindlmarket at Daley Plaza has been held annually for 29 years; two other locations, in Wrigleyville (home of the Cubs) and Aurora (a Chicago exurb), are newer. The market is run by German American Events LLC, a nonprofit subsidiary of the German American Chamber of Commerce of the Midwest, and is modeled after the one in Nuremberg, Germany. We had purposely planned to go at midday on a Wednesday, because hundreds of thousands visit annually, and this year the city had instituted a capacity limit of 1,553 people at a time for safety. (“These new restrictions present unprecedented operational and economic challenges,” the nonprofit said in a press release. “Vendors—many of whom already face steep increases in tariffs and operational costs—depend on the Christkindlmarket for their livelihood. International artisans, particularly from Germany, are now confronting additional strain.”) Long lines just to get in had been reported on weekend nights.
Even on Wednesday the lunchtime crowd was so dense you had to guard your schnitzel from damage, but by one p.m. it had thinned. We found ourselves interested in Krampus ornaments and masks made in workshops in Munich and Salzburg; pewter-and-enamel rustic tableaux meant to hang on a tree or wall; and glass ornaments in every category one could imagine, from individual bird species to pickles, champagne bottles, scuba divers, and Santas in hundreds of attitudes. It was worth it to stand in line in the cold outside big vendor tents, if only for the eventual shuffle-walk with others in the warmth from industrial space heaters.
We took a break for a sandwich and reibekuchenin with applesauce and sour cream on a concrete bench in the lobby of the Daley Center. People were getting wanded at security checkpoints on the other side of plastic dividers, and the feds came and went, speaking of indictment. Then we did one last pass through the market.
The most Chicago guy in the city, an older man underdressed in a thin Blackhawks jacket and driving cap, was chatting up a German vendor at the Fehrenbach Black Forest cuckoo clock booth. The clocks averaged $1,500, and the clerk was explaining about the different numbers of metal pine-cone weights on chains that kept the clocks powered. Three cones indicated a built-in music box as well and were also more expensive because they had to be rewound only after seven days.
The most Chicago man in the city thanked the German for coming all the way from Germany and said he and his companion loved coming to the market every year. “We apologize for our mayor, ‘cause he’s fuckin’ shit,” he said cheerfully, “and anybody who doesn’t like him can kiss my ass.” Chicago’s Christkindlmarket runs, with special events such as the Haus of Krampus, through December 24th.
