Planning to Attend Christmas Eve Service -Attire

The cathedral website has a FAQ on appropriate dress: "Clothing should be appropriate for the house of God. Sleeveless or cropped tops are considered inappropriate as are short shorts or skirts. Men may cover their heads for health or religious reasons. Religiously offensive or racist symbols will not be tolerated"

However, keep in mind the weather, and the fact that the cathedral will be quite cool. Since you likely won't want to even remove your coats or jackets, I wouldn't worry about a suit and tie, or even dress shoes.

Check to see if the Cathedral is heated. I have been in churches in the winter in which my feet froze! You may need layers.
Have a wonderful trip!

Thank you both. I assumed the crop tops and offensive slang were out. LoL the fact that even has to be said is mind boggling! I hadn't thought about it being cold in the sanctuary. That is so true and I appreciate your pointing this out. I was thinking of wearing black corduroy pants, a turtleneck sweater and some dressy flats. I was going to carry them in my backpack and slip them on before walking in if the weather is rough so I don't look like a drowned rat. Now that I look at our flight,we may not be able to do Christmas Eve service there. Ours is always at midnight here and I know trains are on limited schedule on the holidays. Our flight is the next morning (Christmas day) out of Frankfurt at 10 something a.m. so no way I am chancing missing my flight. Hubs will need to go to this church earlier on in the trip.
Again, I appreciate you both and your helpful replies!

There is a midnight Christmas Eve mass in the Cologne Dom. If you are OK with just a few hours sleep before flying home, it is doable.

As an alternative, book a hotel adjcent to the Frankfurt airport (e.g. Sheraton) for Christmas Eve. Attend a service in Frankfurt and taxi to the airport at the end of the service. Since you skip the hour+ trip from Cologne to FRA, you mighjt find this less stressful on your travel home day. See the Dom and drink some Kolsch earlier in the week.

The Cathedral website shows that Midnight Mass is at 2255, preceded by Christmas Music at 2230.

There are masses earlier in the day at 0615, 0700 and 0800 and also Vespers at 1530. So Vespers may be a good service to attend.

The 0700 seems to be the principal daytime mass that day.

Regardless of where you may be able to attend an evening service, I would like to add that big stone cathedrals in any Northern European city are rarely heated much. We’ve always just worn our layers and coats even on Christmas Eve.

@JKH-- I can go without sleep, since we will just be sitting on the plane for the next 11 hours on t he ride home, but DH who is the Catholic (I am not) will not make it without sleep! LOL! I will run it past him and see if he thinks it is something he will want to do. The trains and the schedules are giving me anxiety with the booking ahead. Prices appear to go up every few days in price on these trains! I was also concerned with the train schedules Christmas Eve/Christmas day being reduced.

@isn31c -- Thank you for letting me know these times. I will need to ask my husband if he is willing to go without sleep that night for Cologne. I hadn't realized the distance from Cologne to Frankfurt on the trains and was worried about reduced trains because of the holiday schedules.

@Mona --- I appreciate your letting me know about the "chill", I knew in my head that old stone buildings are always cold, but why I never thought about them being seriously cold in Europe is a mystery to me. I should have thought of that and I didn't so I appreciate everyone letting me know that I need to dress for Friday night Football in November in North Texas. Layers LAYERS Layers!

Do wear some good warm layers…long underwear if you have it!
I went to a concert in Notre Dame in Paris….before the fire….one early February evening and nearly froze.
I did have warm layers on, but sitting still without moving made it much colder.
There is nothing like hearing music in an old European stone church.

You have received good advice about clothing. If your flight is in the morning on Christmas you should be spending the night in Frankfurt. The German trains have become unreliable, and I have discovered this first hand because I’ve just spent 3 weeks in Germany. The suggestion to stay at an airport hotel is a good one, or at the very least stay at a hotel near the train station in Frankfurt. I’ve stayed at Hotel Hamburgerhof twice, as recently as last December. It is clean and safe. The taxi stand is just outside so it’s easy to take a taxi to the airport. You can also take the train to the airport if you prefer.

https://hamburgerhof.com/?lang=en

Not sure if your heart is set on Cologne, but there are services in the Frankfurt Kaiserdom too. Plus, at 16:30 on Christmas Eve, there is the Pealing of the Bells. This is super popular with the Frankfurters, as it is 50 bells from 10 churches ringing for 30 min.
Stay overnight in the city center around the Hauptwache area, and take your train to the airport. Every 15 min. and it only takes 15 min. to get there.

You can wear anything you like to services that is comfortable.

I appreciate all of the suggestions!
1. Wear layers-dress warm for mass- Check!
2. Wear comfortable clothes and not necessary to be "dressed up"-just covered for mass-Check!
3. Consider skipping Mass in Cologne and hit Frankfurt instead for simplicity-Check!

We did decide to skip Cologne for the mass and we will be instead doing Frankfurt for mass on Christmas Eve. We will stay in Frankfurt from the 23rd through the 25th early and do a day trip to Cologne that first day so he can see his church there that he is interested in. I am grateful someone mentioned the bells in Frankfurt on Christmas Eve so I am thankful for that. I love listening to that. I am sad I will miss the market in Frankfurt BUT I will hit the Rothenburg odT one, Munich ones, Nuremburg and I am sure I will possibly be able to hit the one in Cologne. Our schedule is currently: Land in Frankfurt Dec 17 then RodT thru 19th. Nuremberg thru 21st. Munich 21-23 then Frankfurt thru Dec 25th when we fly out.

It is such an easy ride from Frankfurt on the fast train to Cologne (Köln), and the train station Köln Hbf is right next to the Dom. If it takes you 5 minutes to walk it you are moving slowly.

Be sure to give your husband enough time inside - there is a whole lot to see, and the 3 Kings too. A devout person could easily spend 2 hours there.

I think you will really enjoy the pealing of the Frankfurt bells, and for any questions about Frankfurt and vicinity Ms Jo is your woman with the answers.

Hi, Wilde, if you have some time, you might hopefully be able to take a day trip to Aachen, which is a quick 30+ minute train ride away from Cologne. Aachen's cathedral is quite beautiful (especially the interior, which is just gorgeous) and houses the remains of Charlemagne, leader of the Holy Roman Empire. The town itself is also very charming and has a lovely vibe to it. It's smaller than Cologne and you could easily spend some time just walking around and enjoying the sites. Don't miss the Granus tower, which is next to the Rathaus (town hall) and is one of the few pieces remaining from Charlemagne’s palace. It dates back to the 8th century, making it over 1200 years old.

ETA: I just saw your post above about your itinerary: Our schedule is currently: Land in Frankfurt Dec 17 then RodT thru 19th. Nuremberg thru 21st. Munich 21-23 then Frankfurt thru Dec 25th when we fly out.

With that schedule, you probably won't have time for Aachen, and definitely don't skip Cologne, as the cathedral is just magnificent. Is "RodT" meant for Rothenburg ob der Tauber? So are you heading there on Dec. 17? It sounds like you have 2 nights in Rothenburg, 2 nights in Nuremberg, 2 nights in Munich and lastly 2 nights in Frankfurt. Is that correct? It will be a bit rushed but is doable. Good luck and have a wonderful trip! I love Germany and feel sure that this trip will make you want to come back to spend more time there.

Nigel-Thank you for the head's up! I am not Catholic (I am Methodist) but I also do love old churches so thank you for letting me know it won't be a quickie situation then hitting another Christmas Market. I needed to hear that because I was thinking he may be a bit burned out on Christmas Markets by the end of the trip! Eeeek! He doesn't like shopping AT ALL. I am hoping a few Gluhwein & I can walk and look. We planned on doing the markets at night /walking the town during the day but weren't exactly sure what we were going to accomplish with winter & holiday closures of so many of the usual tourist things. I really need to get online & look at what all this church will have for us to view & have been overwhelmed getting last minute hotels &now the anxiety of booking trains! As far as the walk not being further than 5 mins, my father always said I could get lost in a locked in water closet, so since I am the only one planning/researching the trains, I guarantee you the 5 min walk may be a stretch. LOL

Mardee- Oh, that does sound lovely. I may try to do that after his cathedral in Cologne if we end up doing Cologne on the 23rd once we arrive in Frankfurt. I still have to book the train for all of my city to city travels & I have anxiety that I am doing it wrong. We haven't made any type of plans yet for Frankfurt at all other than mass that evening & haven't even decided on which church. He is a Latin mass catholic & not the Roman catholic/Novus Ordo? I think that is the 2 diff terms. So I have to look up a church in Frankfurt that will be nice for Christmas Eve mass for him for that. As a Methodist, we can go anywhere to worship, but his faith is more strict. I think the ones in the center of town won't be his "style" although, IMO does it really matter? One will be in German, which he doesn't speak & the other will be in Latin, which he ALSO doesn't speak.
And yes, we will be rolling it the entire time, I fear. We own our own business so we have to travel when schools /counties are closed so our trips are always a hustle and short. We also kind of thought not a lot would be "open" during the winter/holidays so we were going to do a lot of walking around the towns. We were going to do both Neuschwanstein /Hohenschwangau but have decided the latter probably would be more to our liking. I have read the Neuschwanstein is wonderful from the outside as well (our son was there in October and got the times wrong on his tour so didn't get to go inside) but Hohenschwangau was a better tour. So if the roads are passable while we are there, we will do just the one castle and look at the other from the exterior. If we end up skipping both because of weather, I will have to find something else to do. We had planned to go to Kloster Andechs from Munich as a day trip because it sounded like a monk brewery tour that we would enjoy but it looks like it may not be all it was purported to be with tourism taking it over so I have been on the hunt for something similar with a monk brewery or eatery/monk owned winery tour that would be interesting and not so touristy-just rustic. I noticed that Kloster Andechs offered a virtual reality tour of the brewery now and no actual personal tours anymore so that is not our "thing". And yes, "RodT" was for RoT. I had the abbrev wrong. We have only had a few weeks to schedule/plan this trip because it was a last minute (had to use flight credits that expired Jan 1st 2025 so we decided to get our "money's worth" we could do business class to Germany and back!But had not a thought in my empty head about the amount of planning it would entail. First trip across the pond), so I am not familiar with very much of anything. Sorry for the confusion on that. I appreciate your advice though. That church does sound lovely & he may prefer it over the Cologne one or we may see if we can do one the day we arrive in Frankfurt & the other the following day.

St. Leonhards in Frankfurt is the only Catholic church with services in English, but I don't think they will have a mass in English on the 24th. They will have mass there at 17:30 on Christmas Eve and on the 25th at 11:45, but not in English.
The masses in Frankfurt on the 24th will be held in the Kaiserdom, Deutsche Orden, and Liebfrauen. The one in the Kaiserdom is usually in Croatian for the midnight mass.
If you are in Frankfurt on the 24th, the Pealing of the Bells is at 17:00.

Ms. Jo, thank you very much. I land in Frankfurt early on the 24th and done depart until the 26th. Not sure where my son plans on Mass. I will send him your notes.

The Winter Lights are on at the Palmengarten on the 25th, but get your tickets ahead of time.
The Rembrandt Exhibit at the Städel just opened. The Rembrandt Museum in the Netherlands is getting renovated, so they sent all those huge pictures he painted here to be displayed. They do not usually loan out paintings of this size. Book tickets online for this.
https://www.staedelmuseum.de/en/

Forget the southern Bavarian castles' you won't have time and the weather is not worth gambling on. The 22nd is a Sunday, which is a great day to get pictures of Munich without the crowds, as everything but the churches will be closed until noon.

You should plan on the weather getting down into the 20's and highs in the 30's. And windy. I highly recommend insulated boots.

Be aware that trains on the 24th and 25th will be limited, cabs will be hard to come by, and anything running will be crowded. You need to buy your tickets right now if you don't have them already.

I'd cut a day out of RodT if I had to go to Koln, but you should already have your hotels lined up so that's not going to happen. They have had some issues with maintenance on the train line between Frankfurt and Koln due to a collision last week. Hopefully that will be completed prior to your trip.

Forget Andechs, see if you can get to Kloster Weltenburg Abbey.

Warm socks and shoes, warm pants, long underwear, warm sweaters, heavy jackets, scarf that can be pulled up over the ears for a cathedral!

Ms. Jo

The Winter Lights are on at the Palmengarten on the 25th, but get your
tickets ahead of time. The Rembrandt Exhibit at the Städel just
opened.

Thanks for the head's up on this one. That would have been lovely to visit the museum. I just looked for the dates we are there and it is already sold out. I was surprised it was offering tickets on Christmas day?!? Wow. Unfortunately, we will be gone by early that morning headed back to the states.

KGC-

Yes, we have our hotels already booked. We actually did intend to stay 2 nights each place and just take a bit of the vacation at the onset slowly to come to grips with our jet lag. :)

On the Abbey, I had already decided not to do the other due to a few comments on another forum that stated it was no longer as good as it once was due to over tourism, but the one you suggested when I looked it up, it says it closed for the winter last month, so unfortunately that one is out as well. :(

I think maybe we will be doing Burg Eltz instead of the others as per your suggestion. I need to look into it and see how well it will work the last days we are in Frankfurt. Thank you for the suggestion on the weather AND the insulated boots. I had contemplated whether they were worth lugging around on the trip since we are just bringing backpacks and no wheeled luggage, but may reconsider now. Thank you!

Howlin Mad -

Warm socks and shoes, warm pants, long underwear, warm sweaters, heavy
jackets, scarf that can be pulled up over the ears for a cathedral!

I am actually wondering if I need some "bun" warmers like hand warmers for sitting in the cathedral during Christmas Eve service, too! Ha! I knew older cathedrals were cold inside but hadn't thought about it for "sitting for long periods during service" where you can't get up and walk to get the circulation moving and warm up until people began mentioning it to me on here. I appreciate the suggestion for at least 4 layers and ear coverings.

Why not? My husband actually puts a heating patch (like for a sore back) on his stomach when we are out and about for the day. It would make me crazy, but it makes him happy!

For the Xmas markets,
we brought a bag of disposable hand warmers , and put them inside our gloves. Worked quite well!

Howlin Mad-

Why not? My husband actually puts a heating patch (like for a sore
back) on his stomach when we are out and about for the day. It would
make me crazy, but it makes him happy!
I am dying laughing over this! It sounds like something I would do! My husband LOVES a change of seasons. Having been raised in S. Texas and never having seen a snowflake until I moved to N. Texas at age 19, I cannot stand even 60* weather! I love 100*+ weather. So Germany is going to be a struggle for me. Bun warmers it is!!!!!!!!!!!

Pat-

For the Xmas markets, we brought a bag of disposable hand warmers ,
and put them inside our gloves. Worked quite well!

You are right! I got them on Black Friday Amazon sale a box of 40 and someone else on another forum suggested you open them, let them warm up, then set them in a ziploc baggie and put them in your pocket so they last longer. Something about the hand warmers since they warm up as long as they have oxygen, you can just open and close the ziploc as needed.

I have 4 ziplocs and 10 handwarmer sets each packed as of last night. I hope the ziploc suggestion extends the life of the hand warmers! I now need to add extra handwarmers for the buns in the church! ha!

I find the cathedrals to warm up quite a bit when they get full. Plus many of them do have heaters now, to keep the artwork and altars in good shape. I have never felt the need to have hand warmers or any other kind of warmers in them.

I find the cathedrals to warm up quite a bit when they get full. Plus
many of them do have heaters now, to keep the artwork and altars in
good shape. I have never felt the need to have hand warmers or any
other kind of warmers in them.

Ms. Jo- Thanks for the vote of confidence that I will survive the cold. I appreciate that!