What is the paper cone German first-graders carry on their first day of school?
One morning near the end of August, on the table of a German home, there is a cone of paper nearly half as tall as the child. It is called a Schultüte, a school cone carried in both arms on the first day of school.
The custom began around 1810 in Saxony and Thuringia, and its first written record appears in Jena in 1817. Children were once told that ripe Schultüten could be picked from an imaginary "cone tree" in the schoolyard. Today, parents make them by hand or buy them in shops.
A single manufacturer alone produces more than 2 million each year. Inside are sweets, school supplies, and small dolls. But the cone is not opened at school. After the entrance ceremony and a family lunch, the child returns home, sits on the living-room floor, and slowly unties the ribbon. The nervousness of the first school day, and the weight of a secret held for the first time, rest inside one paper cone.