A neighbor's house transformed into living advent calendar. In some neighborhoods, houses adopt a date, welcoming the public to come in for mulled wine and cookies.
Migros' coupon advent calendar, which features different markdowns for each day in December.
Both a response to and expression of modernity, I think America saved - albeit transformed - religion by privatizing it; Europe baptized the State, and Christianity whithered away. However, elaborate religious rituals live on like cultural ghosts who arrive on schedule; reminiscent of what you're likely to see in mainline churches back home. In Switzerland, there is no separation between church and state, but the former has been folded into the latter. After Christmas break, Michael will have school vacation days for the Ascension and Pentecost.There is a lingua franca of religious tradition practiced in public and second-nature to most - sort of like ethnic identity in the US (Jews with Hanukkah, East Asians with New Years) - these forms have been grandfathered in, but cut no substantive ice any longer. It is like a piece of furniture that occupied a prominent place in a former dwelling, but loses its function after the move. It becomes entirely aesthetic. The sentiment can be conjured, should you come across it, but you don't have a real place for it anymore.
Religion in this sense is more custom than belief. Thus, like in Japan, everyone when asked would say, "I have no religion," which strikes Americans as odd when observing all the hundreds of annual festival rituals, incense offering, shrine tokens, etc. Lots of highly intricate, aesthetically fine-tuned forms, basically.
Because religion as belief is strong in America, a pluralistic solution tries to appease all competing parties, allowing no observance of any one religious form in public; far from no religion, there's an excess of numbers and kind. But in Europe, since religion is largely a non-issue, the customs are both harmless and ubiquitous.
BUT, if belief is dead, religion as ethnic identity becomes potent, because there's no way to regulate it. It's entirely irrational, untethered to larger, human organization or a political framework, and becomes an identity issue.
