Advent and Christmas are the time for carols, of course, a time when you can close your eyes in Germany and imagine you're in Nebraska. "Deck the Halls," "White Christmas," "Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer," "Frosty the Snowman," "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town" -- on the radio, in the marketplace, wherever you go, you can hear Germans playing OUR Christmas songs.

It's not that Germans lack Christmas traditions of their own. By golly, Germans basically wrote the book on them. Christmas trees, hot chestnuts, gingerbread, nutcrackers, mulled wine... Christmastime in Germany is wunderbar! And there are plenty of German Christmas songs, too, such as Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht; O Tannenbaum; and Alle Jahre wieder. Pleasing though they may be in their solemn, sentimental way, they're missing a certain something, and Germans sense it.

Let's call that something PIZAZZ.

Compare the lyrics and melody of "Jingle Bells" with those of Kling, Glöckchen, klingelingeling. See what I mean?

Part of the reason is probably the relative clunkiness of the German language. German jazz vocalist Roger Cicero, who's featured in the next issue of Schau ins Land, says German has "more rough edges" than English does, is "a lot more straightforward" and harder to sing. He's not the first singer to notice.

But a larger part of the reason, I suppose, is the relative stiffness and seriousness of the German people. We've got light and loose ditties like "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus," "Rocking Around the Christmas Tree," "All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth," and "Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer." They've got light and loose ditties like... ah... wait a second... um... ?

See what I mean?

Merry Christmas! Frohe Weihnachten!

Johann-Adolf Hasse. Name ring a bell? If not, you're probably, like most of us, no expert on late Baroque opera. Why am I bringing him up? Because 2006 is Mozart Year -- here, there, and out on the Fiji Islands -- an orgy of celebrations of the maestro's birth 250 years ago. And because the composer Hasse, who slipped into the world a short walk from where I live, said in 1771 about the then 15-year-old prodigy: "This kid is going to cause all of us to be forgotten!"

As prophesies go, that's got to be one of the best.

I thought about this the other day when I passed Hasse's old house in the center of Hamburg's Bergedorf district. Built in 1630, it's a fine, half-timbered brick building next to the Church of St. Peter and Paul, which is a fine, half-timbered brick building that's even older (1502). The house was built for the church organist, the position Hasse's father held. A plaque on the house says that Hasse -- a prolific composer of Italian-style operas who was hugely popular in his lifetime -- was born there.

The plaque is easy to overlook. To better remind Bergedorfers of their famous forgotten son, a small statue of Hasse was recently placed on the walk in front of the house. But it's a losing battle, I'm afraid. When I passed the house the other day, it was draped with a cloth portrait of Mozart.