Darkness, Bells and Tall Hats: A Swiss Christmas Eve Ritual

On Christmas Eve in Zeifen, a village in Switzerland’s Solothurn region, the night closes in as a centuries-old winter ritual unfolds after 9 p.m. The Nünichlingler, a procession of young men in tall black hats who march with heavy bells, move through the village while the church bells fall silent and the lamps along the lanes dim to black. Residents said the gas station and most shops are closed on Christmas Eve, leaving the streets quiet as the crowd begins to gather and watch from doorways and alleyways.

An observer described the spectacle with a sense of awe: the hats, some towering three to four times the height of the wearers, lead a moving procession that winds through the village’s oldest streets. Behind them come rows of shorter hats, from simple felt caps worn by cowherds to long dark coats and bell-ringing formations. At the head of the column is a man with a white beard, carrying a stick topped with a rag used to deter anyone peering from windows. The hats, Stohler notes, are a later addition to an older tradition, but the rule remains: the tallest hats walk first. For more than two centuries, the route has traced the village’s ancient core, a loop that now also skirts power lines that cap the height of the costumes. The mood is ceremonial but buoyant, a rare moment of communal attention in a village that otherwise sinks into stillness as winter deepens.

As the procession gathers momentum, the bells erupt into a roaring, a sound that seems to pull the night into motion. A camera flash captures the moment in which a great, pipe-organ-like form appears to roll along the square: an enormous column of black hats moving as one. The tallest hats pass by first, followed by hundreds more, until the line of figures seems to stretch and contract with the candlelit shadows on the walls. The group then disappears down byways and back toward the fields, leaving onlookers to pick their way through the noise and smoke from village fires.

Historically, villagers believed that on these darkest, shortest days of the year, a window opened in the earth to another world and spirits were loosed. The bells are meant to rouse them and drive them away for another year. Franz Stohler, an 87-year-old Zeifen resident who has long studied the tradition, says the walk runs along the same route that has existed for more than 200 years. He notes that the tallest hats conventionally lead the way, and that the height of the hats has grown since the Second World War, though current infrastructure and land features—such as power lines—place a practical limit on how tall they can become. “Today, first and foremost, the Nünichlingler walk is an expression of joy,” he says, underscoring how the ritual has evolved from a grim test of winter’s darkness into a festive communal rite. The young men who participate say the experience marks them, a rite of passage that ends with a sense of release as they rejoin the town for dinner and celebration.

The night’s echoing bells and the sight of so many silhouettes in black have a purpose beyond spectacle. The ritual, while rooted in fear and the moral economy of winter, functions as a public affirmation of resilience. Greenwood, an anthropologist who has studied similar northern European myths, notes that darkness still wields power in modern life, even if the moral associations of darkness as evil have softened. “There’s a powerful myth in northern Europe of the Wild Hunt, a ghostly cavalcade that roams through wild places,” she says, recalling Odin or Woden at the head of a pack of fierce hounds. Yet, she adds, even when you dissociate darkness from evil, it remains potent because it is the catalyst for renewal and transformation. The myth’s energy can be redirected toward communal bonding and the celebration of light returning with the season. Tim Edensor, a professor of social and cultural geography who has collaborated with Dunn, emphasizes that darkness provides a foil to light that helps people appreciate the latter more deeply. “The contrast with darkness makes light interesting,” he says, a reminder that cultural practices around winter are as much about perception as they are about ritual.

The broader context is equally telling. Across the Alpine and Central European world, dark winter nights give rise to a spectrum of festive or fearsome traditions. In the South Tyrol in December, for instance, demonic Krampuses parade through towns, frightening onlookers to remind children of the wages of naughtiness. Between Christmas and January 6 in Germany, masked figures and chaotic processions aim to disrupt ordinary life and restore balance. In late February, as days grow longer but darkness lingers, Carnival festivities overturn normal order in a symbolic inversion of social norms. And in Valais, Switzerland, villagers still see the Tschäggättä, enormous costumes that roam the streets and heighten the sense of mystery among children and adults alike. All of these practices, scholars say, reflect a common impulse: to confront and harness fear in a collective setting, and to mark the turning of the year toward light.

Despite the intensity of the experience, the mood today in Zeifen is often described as joyful rather than menacing. Stohler, who has lived among the Nünichlingler for decades, says that the ritual endures because it offers participants and spectators a shared moment of awe, a sense that they have endured the darkest hour together and emerge with renewed energy. The crowd’s reaction, too, has shifted with time. What was once a more solemn, even fear-saturated event now includes a sense of communal pride, the young men’ s rite of passage, and the appeal of a spectacle that invites curious visitors to witness something that is both local and historically significant. In that sense, the Nünichlingler walk is less an act of fear and more a demonstration of cultural endurance—an expression of a community that chooses to celebrate light annually even as it recognizes the power of darkness to transform and unify.

Cultural scholars point out that such rituals reveal how people assign meaning to natural cycles. Darkness is not merely a lack of light but a stage for social ritual, memory, and identity. The resurgence of winter rites in several European regions over the past century suggests that communities seek to preserve a sense of continuity and shared history in the face of modern life’s pace and abstraction. In Zeifen, that continuity is embodied in the towering hats, the relentless bells, and the long-standing route through the village’s heart. As the bells finally fade and the walk ends on the hillside, participants and spectators alike are reminded that the dark season can be a source of wonder as much as fear, and that the light—the return of day, of warmth, and of communal gathering—returns with renewed strength each year.