Instead of reflection, the Christmas season often brings stress.

If you want to spoil your mood completely, you can try to organize a school festival or sell cookies according to the rules.

Such an attempt reveals the challenges of the German bureaucracy.

It starts with the food.

Parents or children usually bake waffles or cookies to sell at the Christmas market.

But beware!

Beate Schulte zu Sodingen, partner at a law firm and member of the working group for administrative law of the German Lawyers' Association, explains: "Food with raw eggs, uncooked egg whites or egg yolks, raw milk, yoghurt, quark, cheese, sausage and fresh ground pork" must not be used for a Feast or a stand to be used at the Christmas market.

In addition, Paragraph 3 of the Food Hygiene Ordinance results in a general duty of care, which also includes maintaining the cold chain.

So you have to buy cream and butter with a cool bag in the supermarket and, according to DIN 10508, always cool it to below 10 degrees Celsius.

In addition, the lawyer recommends labeling each dish you bring with you by name.

If there are problems after eating, one can understand who brought the food.

impractical regulations

Beate Schulte zu Sodingen recommends that the organizers of sales or festivals inform their cake bakers about these rules and, if possible, have this confirmed in writing.

In practice, hardly any club and hardly any school does all this.

They also rarely know about it.

Nevertheless, there have been few cases of food poisoning after such Christmas celebrations.

Which raises the question of how sensible these regulations are.

No club or school would like to be named in this context.

Most of them try to follow the hygiene rules.

The board member of an association reports anonymously that they organized sneeze guards, running water and electricity for their stand for a Christmas market.

Even the health department had nothing to complain about.

"These are gray areas without which a school would not function"

A school principal says that all students who sell food at a school Christmas market have completed online hygiene training beforehand.

However, the students did not pay attention to the cold chain.

"These are gray areas without which a school would not function," says the headmaster.

In addition, the customers of the Christmas market know "what they are getting into".

Neither the club nor the school had any problems with the health department.

It seems as if the health authorities are also concentrating on the most important rules - on those that clubs and schools can also comply with with realistic effort.

In addition, the responsible offices and ministries do not always know about the applicable hygiene regulations and responsibilities.

After a request from the FAS about the hygiene regulations at daycare and school festivals, a spokesman for the Baden-Württemberg Ministry for Social Affairs, Health and Integration referred to the Ministry of Education.

Later it turned out that the Ministry of Health is responsible.

A new sales tax directive caused a stir this year.

If public institutions are in competition with private companies, they will have to pay sales tax from the new year at the latest.

These establishments can also include schools if they compete with a baker with their cookies or cakes.

The Federal Ministry of Finance responded to a request from the FAS: Whether sales tax is incurred for cake sales at school festivals depends “on the specific structure of the individual case.

The decision on this is the responsibility of the responsible state financial authorities.”

In practice, little will change

They give different information on the subject.

The North Rhine-Westphalia Ministry of Finance emphasizes that it is working to extend the transitional period for the new sales tax regulation.

The Baden-Württemberg Ministry of Finance explains that such sales can remain VAT-exempt: "It just has to be clear that the students or parents are active, but not the school itself." Then at least sales of up to 22,000 euros are imminent year exempt from sales tax.

That applies to all of Germany.

When asked how it differs whether the school or individual students sell, a spokesman for the Ministry of Finance replies: "One sign is enough: the students of 7A sell." In practice, little will change.

But you can see how incomprehensible laws often are.

In addition, some schools are unsure how to deal with the new regulation.

The principal, who has already had his say above, takes a pragmatic approach to the matter.

They set up a fundraiser at their Christmas market and gave away the cake.

His comment on this: "Where there is no plaintiff, there is no judge." This attitude often occurs in this area.

However, the demand for tax and hygiene rules should be a little higher.