The Advent season is a magical time in Germany, as festive Christmas markets bring the sights, sounds and smells of the holidays to storybook cities and villages.

Rows of canvas and wood stalls with awnings brim with a visual feast of handcrafted wares and tantalizing treats: nutcrackers and handblown glass ornaments, wooden toys and leather belts, colorful knitted caps and stuffed Santas, Nativity scenes and marionettes, heart-shaped iced gingerbread cookies and marzipan fruits.

Moswin Tours Ltd. (ENLARGE)
The Nuremberg Christkindlesmarkt, famous the world over, can be traced to the mid-16th century. Food, toys, holiday decorations and arts and crafts can be found at hundreds of stalls. The sprawling Chicago Christkindlmarket is modeled after it.
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IF YOU GO Getting there • By air: Expect to pay about $500 to $600 for winter fares to Frankfurt on Air France, Continental, Delta, Lufthansa and United. • With a group: Most tour operators offer Christmas markets trips; your travel agent can help you find the one that best suits you or customize an independent tour. The Cleveland, Ga.-based VIP Alpine Tours offers annual market tours. This year's tours are to UNESCO World Heritage cities in Southern Germany (Nov. 26-Dec. 3) and in Austria and the Czech Republic (Dec. 3-10). Information: 1-800-403-1996, http://www.vipalpinetours.com. The Women's Travel Club usually offers a Christmas markets trip, but not this year. 1-800-480-4448, http://www.womenstravelclub.com. An online resource for nearly three dozen market tours by several tour operators is ChristmasMarketTours.com, based in West Palm Beach, Fla. 1-800-942-3301, http://www.christmasmarkettours.com. Information • German National Tourist Office: 1-800-651-7010, http://www.cometogermany.com. • To order a brochure by e-mail: To request a copy of "Welcome to Christmas Wonderland" fill out the form at http://www.visits-to-germany.com/pages/index_mail.cfm. • Photos online: Widely traveled photographer Galen R. Frysinger has an online gallery that includes excellent color photographs of German Christmas markets, including markets featured in this article. For direct access to the galleries, go to: http://www.galenfrysinger.com/rothenburg.htm, http://www.galenfrysinger.com/nurnberg.htm and http://www.galenfrysinger.com/wurzburg.htm. (Click on Christmas markets)

The aromas of sausages grilling and nuts roasting curl through the chilly air, mingling with the fragrance of evergreen branches and fresh-cut wood, as people line up to buy the hot mulled wine called glühwein in little boot-shaped mugs imprinted with the market's logo.

Organ music floats out from a cathedral. Jolly holiday tunes ring through the market stalls. Shivering schoolchildren standing on city hall steps sing out in clear young voices.

And as dusk falls, the illumination begins. Grand old buildings are awash in floodlights. Streetlights, lanterns, strings of tiny lights and flickering candles cast a soft glow over plazas and town squares from Hamburg to Munich, Dusseldorf to Dresden, and hundreds of tiny towns in between.

Makes you feel like bursting into a chorus of "O Tannenbaum."

This centuries-old tradition of the Christmas market is kept alive at more than 2,500 markets throughout Germany. While Dresden's Streizelmarkt, dating to 1484, is considered Germany's oldest market, perhaps the most famous is Nuremberg's Christkindlesmarkt, first held in 1545.

Through the years, the holiday event spread to neighboring countries, including France and Italy. Many cities in the United States have adopted the tradition as well. The sprawling Chicago Christkindlmarket, which celebrates its 10th anniversary this year, drew 1.3 million visitors last year. It is modeled after the one in Nuremberg — down to the red-and-white-striped canvas on the timber-frame stalls.

The German markets are variously called Christkindlesmarkt (Christ Child Market), Weihnachtsmarkt (Christmas Market) or, in Rothenburg-ob-der-Tauber, Reiterlesmarkt, which refers to an old Teutonic legend about a rider who brings gifts on horseback.

Last December, we joined the Women's Travel Club for a Christmas markets tour to Nuremberg, Rothenburg and another German town, Wurzburg, as well as the Czech city of Prague.

One of the travelers, Karen Nolan of Cleveland, Ohio, signed up for the trip because "from the description in the itinerary, it just sounded like a picture-postcard fairyland."

While her favorite was Rothenburg ("It's just such a sweet little town"), she enjoyed all the markets until she arrived in Prague, which she felt was large and crowded.

But everywhere, she said, she found vendors to be "really friendly and eager to help. I bought some kitchen tools, species, cookies, candy and a fruitcake. The lebkuchen cookies were really good — even after Christmas."

But Nolan says the Germans can keep their fruitcake, thank you.

"The fruitcake was awful, and I am one of the few people who like fruitcake. It was extremely dry and hardly had any of the candied fruit like our fruitcakes here in the U.S. Everyone said I should pour rum or something over it, but even the taste was not good enough to waste the rum."