Illinois Christmas: The “Hide The Pickle” Holiday Tradition

((Warning: There may be some double-entendres sprinkled in this piece. I mean, we're talking about hiding the pickle, after all))

Like many men would, I completely misunderstood my wife Amy's intentions when she looked at me with a smile one December evening many years ago and said: "So...you want to hide the pickle?"

After replying with something clever like "Yeah!" I did feel the need to point out to her that it was only 7pm and the kids were still up and active. She nodded her head knowingly and said "We can still do it, but we can't let them catch us."

She then thoroughly confused me when she handed me a box that contained this:

The Christmas Pickle Ornament And "Hiding The Pickle" Is A Real Thing, Even If I Knew Absolutely Nothing About It And Had No Idea Whatsoever Where It Came From

See, here the thing with that. No one seems to know for sure exactly when or where the idea of hanging a pickle in your Christmas tree came from. I first heard about it nearly 30 years ago, in the middle 90s when my wife got this thing started at our house.

After doing some research, I found that many households play "Hide The Pickle" around the holidays, most often on Christmas Eve.

The most common tradition involving the pickle ornament is hiding it somewhere in the Christmas tree on Christmas Eve. Then, when Christmas morning rolls around, the first kid in the house to find the hidden pickle ornament gets an extra present. Most of the places that I visited to learn about this called it an old German tradition.

Except That Nearly No One In Germany Has Ever Heard Of It

USAToday.com says that in December of 2016, a YouGov survey found that 91 percent of Germans had never heard of the 'Weihnachtsgurke' (Christmas Pickle), let alone had one in their own homes.

Another take on it, according to a box containing a Christmas pickle ornament, is that the tradition began when a German immigrant in Illinois fought as a Union Soldier in the Civil War. According to WhyChristmas.com:

The story features a fighter in the American Civil War who was born in Bavaria (an area of what is now Germany). He was a prisoner, and starving, he begged a guard for one last pickle before he died. The guard took pity on him and gave a pickle to him. The pickle gave him the mental and physical strength to live on!

Supposedly, after returning home, the solider began the tradition of hanging a pickle on his family’s tree each Christmas Eve. There's no mention of the German immigrant/soldier having anything to do with Illinois in that piece, or in anything else I could find on the origins of the Christmas pickle.