As a writer who’s been fascinated with Europe in the Middle Ages since I was a child, I have long wanted to experience the festivity and cheer around Christmas markets. While I have visited many European countries over the years, I always tended to travel in warm, sunny weather. Frankly, I favor comfort (and heat), even over the allure of cute stalls featuring treasures I shouldn’t really afford. Until one year when the fates intervened and allowed me to visit Germany in December. I spent two glorious days sampling all that Frankfurt’s holiday markets had to offer. Mobile fondue for one was easily my best experience. Glühwein tied with hot white wine for my least.

Wandering Frankfurt’s Römerberg, it was easy to believe I’d stepped into a medieval ritual unchanged by time. But Christmas markets, for all their old-world charm, are hardly relics frozen in the Middle Ages. Rather, they’re living traditions shaped by climate, commerce, religion, and reinvention. They’re born less from nostalgia than from the simple problem of surviving winter.

The History of Winter Markets

Some of the first so-called Christmas markets in recorded history appear during the late medieval period in Germanic lands. During this time, winter fairs weren’t exactly celebrations so much as necessities that offered locals a final chance to prepare before snow and ice made travel difficult. These early markets sold practical goods (preserved meats, bread, candles, woolens, and tools) alongside small indulgences that brightened the darkest weeks of the year. In an age before electric light or central heating, warmth came not just from mulled wine or open braziers. They also came from the simple act of being together.

As these winter markets spread, they adapted. This was especially visible in France. Medieval France was already home to the famed Champagne Fairs. These fairs operated on a rhythm of “hot” and “cold” seasons that structured commerce across Europe. They peaked centuries before Christmas markets took recognizable form, but they established markets as a temporary, communal event tied to time, weather, and movement.

Changes Over Time

By the early modern period, winter markets in regions like Alsace, which sits on the border of France and Germany, began to blend Germanic Advent traditions with French Catholic ritual and refinement. For example, Strasbourg’s market emerged in the wake of the Reformation. Protestant reforms shifted public winter celebrations away from St. Nicholas–centered traditions and toward the Christkind. First recorded in the sixteenth century, it’s a perfect example of a hybrid culture, being devotional without being austere and festive without abandoning purpose.

More recently, I had the chance to visit the Christmas markets in Paris, Reims, and even Troyes. In Paris, the markets felt urban and theatrical, strung with lights and designed for wandering rather than provisioning. Reims, with its looming cathedral and position on the doorstep of Champagne country, was less bustling and more contemplative. And Troyes, once a hub of Europe’s great medieval fairs, seemed almost self-aware in its modesty, but still carried the familiar notes of sugar, smoke, and wine. Honestly, I enjoyed the flavor of each one.

Into the New World

Christmas markets arrived in the United States as an import of old-world festivity shaped by immigration, nostalgia, and urban reinvention. German immigrants brought elements of Weihnachtsmärkte with them in the nineteenth century, particularly to cities like Philadelphia, Cincinnati, and St. Louis. For multiple reasons, these early expressions rarely took permanent root. Instead, the modern American Christmas market seems to be its own phenomenon, emerging alongside downtown revitalization efforts and a growing appetite for seasonal public rituals. In cities starved for shared winter experiences outside of disappearing shopping malls and private homes, these markets offer something America doesn’t do as well as Europe does: an invitation to linger outdoors, to drink something warm, to browse slowly, and to gather without an agenda. What America adopted was not medieval necessity, but its essential atmosphere.

I had the chance to experience this newest variety on a trip to New York City this month. My first stop was Bryant Park, which felt as lavish as anything I saw in Paris or Frankfurt, with copious stalls offering food, drink, and shopping around a vibrant ice rink. My second stop was outside the Union Square station, far smaller and much more crammed, offering trinkets aimed at harried gift-givers. I loved them both.

Going into the future, I’m going to ignore the cold and lean into visiting more Christmas markets. And I’ll pack warmer boots!