So, did you trot out any traditions with which to celebrate the start of the new year? Chris and I started out December 31, 2013 in London, where we had gone for a long weekend getaway between Christmas and New Year’s. We were back in Tübingen, though, by the evening, just in time to settle in and perform a traditional German New Year’s Eve’s ritual: watching the British comedy sketch Dinner for One on German broadcast television.

I know what you’re thinking: there must be typo in that last paragraph. Surely a German tradition wouldn’t be to watch a British comedy sketch on TV, right? I mean,  would the Germans really be watching something British every year?

Well, yes and no. Dinner for One is a German TV show based on an old British comedy sketch. It was filmed in Hamburg, Germany in 1963 and has been broadcast annually on New Year’s Eve ever since, in Germany as well as in most other German-speaking countries in Europe. The show’s dialog is performed in English, but it’s really not a British TV show. In fact, Dinner for One has apparently never been broadcast in England, or in any English-speaking country, at least according to Wikipedia. But in Germany, it wouldn’t be New Year’s Eve without it.

I caught myself typing “Let me explain” to introduce this next paragraph. But that isn’t quite a true statement, as I really can’t explain why this is so popular in German-speaking countries. All I can explain is what Dinner for One is about. The short (11 minute) 2-person comedy sketch revolves around an elderly wealthy woman hosting a dinner party to celebrate her birthday. She’s invited 4 of her friends to the party, but they all died years before. So her butler, James, serves rounds of drinks to each of the 4 empty guest places, a different kind of liquor to go with each of the 4 courses in the meal (e.g. sherry with the soup, white wine with the first, etc.) James then pretends to be each of the guests in turn and toasts to milady’s health in different styles and voices. Since he is consuming 4 drinks with each round, James gets progressively drunker as the dinner goes on, and he starts stumbling around, spilling the drinks, tripping over the tiger-skin rug, and becoming less and less coherent .

FWIW, the following lines are famously from this skit, and apparently can be used to comic effect in Germany in other contexts to parody it. James and his boss have this exchange before each round of drinks, and then once more at the end of the sketch with a different comic purpose.

James (the butler): Same procedure as last year, madam?
Woman: Same procedure as every year, James.

German friends of ours in Bolzano mentioned this tradition years ago, but I found it hard to believe that they weren’t joking. After all, a British comedy routine is traditional on German TV at New Year’s? What were the odds that my friends were telling the truth, eh? But they really were, as it turns out. Here’s a link where you can read another person’s take on this, so you can see I’m not making this up.

Anyway, although Chris and I have lived in Germany since 2011, this was actually the first year we’ve been in Germany on New Year’s Eve. The tradition dictates that while watching this show you are supposed to drink along with James as he toasts/drinks through each round. So, Chris and I dutifully turned on the telly at 11:40pm on Tuesday night, and sipped a Spezi along with James as he got plastered, keeping in the spirit, if not in same spirits, as James. (Spezi is a non-alcoholic German drink.)

BTW, here’s a link to a version of it for you to check out for yourself. The weird thing is that I can’t find the same version on the Internet that we actually saw on Tuesday. When watching the clip that I’ve linked above, I noticed right away that the camera angles are all different from the version we saw, as are the sets, even though the people and the dialog are the same.  I showed it to Chris and he agreed with me, it’s not exactly what we saw, particularly the staircase, which is very different (and noticeable because it factors into the ending).  The most popular version is shown by the broadcaster ARD, which is the channel where we watched it. Unfortunately they don’t have their version online (which is 18 minutes long, including a brief intro in German), but if you look at this page for it, you’ll see a still of the butler and the tiger rug. The still has the camera angle and framing that we saw, which doesn’t appear in any of the many clips on YouTube I watched today. I’m puzzled by how there are different versions with the same actors, but different sets, but so it would seem.

Before you comment that Chris and I just had too much to drink along with James and therefore don’t remember it properly, might i remind you we drank 16 sips of Spezi. Anyway, I guess we’ll have to wait until the next New Year’s Eve to figure it all out.

BTW, did I mention that the dinner party in the show has nothing at all to do with New Year’s Eve? In fact, on Tuesday the show was timed to end before midnight, which gave us a chance to click over to a station broadcasting the fireworks display over the Hamburg Harbor; that show came complete with a count-down clock as the minutes ticked on toward midnight. A little more like what I’m used to for New Year’s Eve for ringing in the new year.

After the fireworks ended, a commercial came on that indicated that —at least somewhere in Germany — another traditional thing to do on New Year’s Eve is to eat Berliners, the jelly doughnut style doughnuts that are also traditional for the Carnival season coming up.

Hmm. No one mentioned that as being a tradition for New Year’s in this part of Germany. With apologies to James and Madam, I think I will look into that as a possible new procedure for next year.