Pfingsten is the weekend known in English as Whitsun or Pentecost. The Sunday and Monday are bank holidays in the whole of Germany. It falls 50 days after Easter.

Pfingsten celebrates the moment when the Holy Ghost descended to Jesus’ disciples, allowing them to be understood by everyone that they talked to. To the listeners they appeared to be speaking in their native language.

The weekend is often used by families to have a longer weekend away. Some parts of Germany have school holidays that start on this weekend.

To hear a simple explanation and a short discussion in German, listen to the podcast:

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Tags: Pentecost, Pfingsten, Whitsun

Other posts on the same topic:

• Public Holidays 1

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 21st, 2008 at 9:00 am and is filed under German Words Explained, Podcasts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.