It was like this …Cozy reading with music, Christmas stories and a criminal surprise

Kolter and mulled wine reading offered new insights into the festival and lots of music in the museum barn.

Yes, it was cold again, just as it should be for a reading in winter. And it was white around the barn – the ambience around the sugared museum courtyard was perfect for a candlelit pre-Christmas reading, to which Traudi Schlitt, together with Astrid Ruppert, Thomas Walter and the Alsfeld History and Museum Association, had invited. It was quickly sold out, and like last year, the guests of this very special event were thrilled by the Christmas atmosphere in the museum barn, which had previously been conjured up in the old walls by many helpers with countless lanterns, lights and Christmas decorations. The smell of mulled wine and apple punch did the rest. “Everything from the region,” as Tanja Gremmel, who gave the welcome on behalf of the history and museum association, reported. Just like the Alsfeld Koltern that the two of them went to Authors were allowed to wrap themselves up. They both clearly enjoyed it and reported that they both only knew the beautiful word for blanket as “the Kolter” – until they moved from the Fuldaer Land to the Vogelsberg, where it is called “the Kolter”. “The Duden allows both,” Traudi Schlitt reassured the guests and, after the swinging opening music by Thomas Walter, started with three columns on the subject of Christmas and November on the old barn wing. “There used to be more tinsel,” she mused in the spirit of Loriot, mourning the Christmas celebrations of her childhood. Nowadays people have to deal with Christmas cucumbers and all sorts of oddities surrounding the festival. The fact that two important men’s days fall in November may have been news to some of those present – Traudi Schlitt was informed about this by a large online provider and took this as an opportunity to raise awareness about the unfair treatment of men in the fashion sector.

Astrid Ruppert had brought her all-time Christmas book “On top of that, it’s snowing” and this year introduced a protagonist who was cut from the ZDF Christmas film: Sabrina, a bit overweight, a cake fan and involuntarily single. The spectators in the barn shared with her their loneliness at the festival, their hope that the choir director would hear their pleas and their amazement when love appeared at the door in the form of a blue-eyed emergency doctor. “After all, it’s Christmas,” said Astrid Ruppert with a wink, “so it can be a happy ending.”

Traudi Schlitt also had a happy ending in store for her guests, albeit one of a special kind. She had one especially for this evening wrote another Alsfeld Christmas thriller. In “Death in front of Christkindwiegen”, the protagonists from Schlitt’s crime novel “Death in the Ossuary”, which was published this autumn, have to quickly solve a murder between the closing time of the shop and Christkindwiegen, so that the Alsfelder Tradition can take place undisturbed.

The last column of the reading had a few relaxation tips for the festival and the wish to the audience: “Make yourself comfortable!”

Between the individual parts, Thomas Walter played the most beautiful Christmas songs in a very good mood, and because it was so nice and cozy and Christmassy was in the barn, it didn’t take much persuasion to encourage the audience to sing. Choir leader Thomas Walter joined in and played to “Jingle Bells”, with the sounds of which this reading ended and certainly left lasting Christmas impressions.

Traudi Schlitt’s Christmas crime novel has now been printed quickly and will be included free of charge with the crime novels in the Leseswert bookstore in December. Anyone who would like to have it without the book can also get it in the bookstore for a small donation to the Christ Child Cradle.

Photos: Tanja Gremmel