Cologne is not the place to go if you're looking for a warm and sunny Christmas Day. It's not the place to go for Christmas dinner--the food is fine, but my mom's is better, and at home there aren't any surly German waiters to accommodate. It's certainly not the place to go shopping: all the shops were closed three days in a row, Sunday, Christmas, and The Day After Christmas, and in any case most of the stores in the mall did everything possible to resemble nightclubs for the Italian teenagers. (At least, when I went to a night club once, that is what it was like.)
But Cologne at Christmas is a hymnwriter's paradise.
In the Archdiocese of Cologne, which has its own handy prayer book/ hymnal, hymns are even used in places where they frankly shouldn't be. Instead of the Gloria, they might sing an obviously
beloved Christmas hymn whose refrain is "Ehre sei Gott im der Hoehe"--"Glory to God in the highest".
(Mp3) Sometimes that same hymn is used for the Sanctus. Similar substututions are made for almost all the acclamations, except the Memorial Acclamation (of which they apparently have just one) and the Amen. Even the Creed is sometimes replaced with a hymn. In American churches, one often wonders whether one will be the only person genuflecting at et Verbum caro factum est; at the Christmas Masses I attended, the Creed did not include that line!
Racks of handbooks are available in all of the churches as you walk in for Mass. They have some kind of programming that allows them to project the hymn numbers and verses (e.g. 840, 1 + 4) in a small square of light on the wall. The people really sing. The organists were almost all excellent, although one had that bad habit of following the congregation instead of leading, with the ultimate result that no one in the entire church had any clue when to come in. There is no downbeat anymore when that happens. They didn't have cantors (unless the organist filled that role as well) and for the first time I realized how important cantors are. It didn't matter on the familiar songs, like Es ist ein Ros' entsprungen, but on the more unusual songs, people had trouble singing along.
Except for Christmas Mass at one parish which seems to groan beneath the weight of a number of resident liturgists, all of the Masses I attended were remarkable for their reverence. Which just goes to show you. In the US church, a wrong usage such as the substitution of a hymn for the Sanctus would be alarmingly decried as "liturgical abuse" and equated with irreverence. One must admit it is a mistake, and a serious one. But it did not seem agenda-driven or iconoclastic or anti-ultra-montane. It just seemed like a problem that I hope they'll address.
In the meantime, you've gotta admit that it's pretty sweet to sing, in the great
Koelner Dom on the Feast of the Holy Innocents, Lo How a Rose E'er Blooming. Whose third verse, a late addition to the hymn text and only weakly translated into English, is pure pleasure to sing in the German. Fanatical as it may sound, singing the first line alone was worth the trip.
Das Blümelein, so kleine, das duftet uns so süß,
Mit seinem hellen Scheine vertreibt's die Finsternis.
Wahr' Mensch und wahrer Gott,
hilft uns aus allen Leiden,
Rettet von Sünd' und Tod.
