To try and recreate a Christmas market in my back garden.

Also required is small children ( preferably the ones that have spent most of 2020 in pyjamas and clutching an Xbox controller ) being made to do repeated laps of said garden complaining bitterly that they’re bored , that they think the artisanally hand thrown ( painted from Poundland ) baubles are shit , before throwing up phenomenally expensive hot chocolate all over Santa after ten goes on a glitter encrusted trampoline at £5 a pop .

Buy a sack of horse carrots & sell them for a pound a go 'for Rudolph'.

Ideally, to provide an instant gratification Rudolph feeding moment, borrow a small fat grumpy pony from your local riding club, attach pound shop antlers & a leftover Red Nose Day nose, & wait for him to bite children who attempt to feed him his 187th carrot of the hour when he only likes pony nuts anyway.

Have someone demonstrating an old hat kitchen gadget like a spiraliser, and selling it for £20.

I almost forgot you need an upcycling stall. Gather together a piece of old wood, a lightbulb and some old rusty pipes. Cobble them together to create a light fitting. The more rusty the better. Don't even bother covering the screws you use to fix it all together. Then charge a ridiculous amount of cash for this innovative art work.

Dont forget the 3pm 'real' snowfall. Set up a bubble machine in a bedroom window and turn it on for 1 minute. If you don't have a bubble machine, shake the filling from an old beanbag chair out the window instead.

You're all being very mean I love Christmas markets (though I don't like the crowds).

Carpet, you don't need to go to Germany for them, you get nice ones here too, especially Edinburgh which is equal to any I've been to in Germany. But Cologne is a good choice because there are several markets. Frankfurt is good too and I also liked the one in Strasbourg, though vin chaud isn't as good as Gluehwein.

Winchester usually has a nice Christmas market too.

But none of them are nice when they are overcrowded.

Love this thread, thank you op!

I've never been to a Christmas market, thank you for recreating it for me! When I lived in Germany as a child only my sister was allowed to go, and now I live too far from civilization. I did see a German market the last time I passed through the Isle of Skye though, it was quite surreal!

One day I will take my kids to a German market in Germany. I'm usually a proper homebody, but I really miss Germany and the kids get very impressed by me speaking German!

this is great. You don't even need a big garden, to get the crowded atmosphere, the smaller the better.

Dd suggests you sell some stuff that you don't know what they are or what they are for. I think this would be a good way to recycle all the plastic tat from crackers and takeway kids meals..

This time last year I was in Basle for the very, very classy Christmas markets but this one sounds a lot more fun. It's nice and damp today too, so a good time to really go for that Somme in winter look.

Can you get someone to spray paint themselves and then stand sort of stillish with a dish in front of them for money? Not actually still like a statue, just sort of resting in one place whilst demanding money with menaces via a look?

Love this! Have you all seen it?

m.youtube.com/watch/f6m9tvs3PhU

“I don’t feel Christmassy till I get my plugs!”

Oh and games where “everybody wins a prize” and you realise you’ve paid £5 for a rubber ball.

Well if Peter Duncan can do a panto is in back garden, recreating a Christmas market seems simple and a good idea.

Just as long as nothing can be stolen.

You need a bottle of baileys so you can add so little of it to your hot chocolate that you can't taste it but charge yourself an extra fiver for it.

Swop all your cash for tokens so you don’t realise you are paying £15 for 2 kids to jump on a bouncy castle for 30 seconds.

These two comments are spot on!

Ramming your own ankles with a pushchair might be a challenge but at least pick pocketing yourself shouldn’t be too hard.

Put no more than 5 chocolate raisins from Lidl (preferably out of date) in a small freezer bag and tie the top with a bit of garden string and display all the bags on a festive tea towel with a sign saying 'Rudolph Poop 1 for £6.50 or 2 for £10'.

...

Catch your friend's 19-23 year old son before he's shaved off his Movember facial hair, put him in a Santa suit with a cushion up his front and pay him in Rudolph poop.

....

Or just take your £100 out in the garden, dash back to the cash point for another essential £38, then have a nice bonfire while singing Good King Wenceslas.

Have a stone-baked pizza stall that looks delicious but only has capacity to produce one pizza an hour.

DH has been working very hard to create a tasteful Christmas market in our back garden. I'm going to ruin (improve) it with some of these fab ideas.

Don’t forget the stall holders must wear knitted finger less gloves and a ‘money belt’ which when unzipped is jam packed with £20 notes taken from the unsuspecting customers all buying their ‘home made’ products. If you offer them a £20 note they have to shout across to the next stall holder “Ere Jim, do you have change for a £20?”

Swop all your cash for tokens so you don’t realise you are paying £15 for 2 kids to jump on a bouncy castle for 30 seconds.

Don’t forget the stall selling lots of weird looking glassy jewellery. Hand made of course. Earrings which appear to be made from lumps of lava strung together on dodgey looking wire. Along with a matching necklace all for the bargain price of £45, add an extra bonus wrap it in a piece of tissue paper.

^And a bag off marshmallows 70p
Charge £4 each +£1 for a marshmallow on top^

😂😂❤️❤️❤️

You need to alternate 'stalls' selling wooden word signs like 'Love' and 'Home' at £30+ a pop. Handbags made out of felt, feel free to charge an extortionate price, cushions (also saying 'Love etc), the aforementioned fudge, the mix of biscuits. It helps if many stalls sell the same shite. Must put up notices which say 'handmade with love'. Everything "handmade" and not a range knock off oh no justifies its extortionate price tag.

All the stall holders need to look really fucked off too.

It needs to be a hotbed of passive aggressive selling.

For a really genuine atmosphere you need me to come and stomp huffily around, saying everything is over priced rubbish and I’m never coming again.

Then I’ll probably turn up next year.