Preparing a cake stall for the Christmas season takes extensive preparation, according to owner Maggie Talbot. She and a team of 8 people work 5 days a week for 4 months ahead of Christmas to get ready. While traditional ornament stalls used to be more popular at Christmas markets, nowadays food and drink stalls like donut stands sell much more. The Bratwurst sausage stall tends to be the most popular stall throughout most Christmas markets, with long lines and high sales each year.

2. It takes a lot to prepare for
the festive season, and on
average, a cake stall like this
takes up to 4 months to
prepare for the coming
December.
Maggie Talbot, the stall
owner, said “a team of 8 of
us work 5 days a week for 4
months prior to Christmas.”
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3. The traditional ornament stalls, which was originally what the
Christmas markets were about, now a days do not sell as much
compared with the food and drink stalls. This Crystal stall only
got 2 sales within an hour, whereas the donut stall sold to a
countless number of customers.

4. When the Christmas markets first started, they put fruit on skewers
and covered them in chocolate as they did not have many ‘sweet
treat’ stalls so this was sort of a last resort.
So much so that the
idea of ‘chocolate
fondue’ as we know
it today, originated
from this stall.

5. The most popular stall throughout most Christmas markets tends to be
the Bratwurst stalls. They are a bit like a hotdog but they use German
pork sausage instead.
Stall worker Sabrina Lowe said: “The Bratwurst stall is defiantly the
most popular, each year it has the most queues and intake!”

6. The Christmas markets have always been known as the ‘German
Christmas Markets,’ as demonstrated in the picture below, however
this is not technically true.
The Christmas markets actually originated from Austria in 1294.
Austrian people took to the markets to sell their goods for money
to buy loved ones Christmas presents with.

7. There are the more general
stalls that appear at all
Christmas markets but every
town that hosts the markets
will have a local variation of
stalls, for example the Leeds
Christmas markets have a garlic
bread stall, and a stall that sells
snow globes with ‘Leeds’
written in them.

8. Every single Christmas market has
the head of a moose somewhere in
it, this is traditionally put up as a
central point of the markets. The
people gather round the moose’s
head to sing carols.
However stall owner, Nastassia
Wortle, said: “It’s not as much a
tradition now as it was 15 years
ago.”

9. Most towns in the UK now welcome the festive markets, but the
first ever Christmas markets was in Lincoln. This was because of its
close friendship with a small German town that used to send hats
and warm clothing goods over to Lincoln, until it became a tradition
every year.

10. Every
Christmas
market
traditionally
has
a
carousel, this was because the
parents used to leave the
children on the carousel with
the attendant and the adults
would go off and browse the
stalls.
The children never really
experienced any other aspect
of the markets but this
tradition has pretty much died
out now.

11. There are thousands of
people that go to the
Christmas markets more than
once
every
year.
This
year, around 720,000 people
are expected to attend the
Christmas markets in Leeds.
Maria Anastaiadi said “I have
travelled from Greece to the
Leeds Christmas markets, I
didn’t expect them to be this
busy!”