The legend of the pickle- or: where did the cucumber go?

Now that I know that it is definitely me who has been designed to do the gruesome work of dismantling the Christmas tree a very strange thought came to me. Where did my pickle go, the one I had ordered from Amazon? I always had wondered why in German shops there are plain glass cucumbers among other, more pretty decoration. I mean, if I can buy stylish cats, dogs, hamburgers etc, why would I put a plain green cucumber onto my tree? There has to be a reason for it: apparently the pickle came from Germany to the States, where it became widespread as a Christmas decoration (that second part I believe), then got reimported back to Germany. More than 90 % of the Germans do not even know why one would put such an ugly object onto a tree. The thing is that this pickled "beauty" did indeed come from Germany in a shipment of Christmas decoration, and no one knew what to do about this ugly sample first, except for the local cucumber producing farmers. A heartbreaking background story, Santa handing out Cucumbers - agronomy meets Christmas fairy tale. The one who finds the ugly pickle hanging hidden in the branches gets an extra present or is the one allowed to open his parcels first. Nice, indeed! Oscar would have loved this! I have bought a pickle for our tree, thing is, no one has seen it, because it has never made it into the branches. What a shame! Thankfully I was so stressed on Christmas Eve that I completely forgot to tell the little ones to look for it. Oscar would have overturned the tree in search of what was not even there. It´s not in the cupboard in the cellar, it´s not on the tree, so my guess is that someone smashed it and forgot to tell me, or maybe found it too ugly and disposed of it - I will never know. Now I will have to wait for next November, when shops in Germany will sell pickles again, or order another one from Amazon, which might be safer, because who knows when the borders will be open for us to pass again! If only the shipping costs weren´t that high!
Another matter altogether: In January Schleich presents the new edition of horses. Since toyshops are closed you´d have to do your orders at the Schleich shop. Alas, all new ones are sold out. Another shop online, sold out also. So I had a look into the wonderworld of Amazon, and yes, the new horses are available - almost twice as expensive, but still! There have to be quite a lot of people who make a mint, especially with all those annoying side effects of lockdown!