The 2018 version of the annual Christmas Country Church Tour will take place both today and tomorrow, December 13th and 14th.  Our Lutheran Heritage Center & Museum is one of the stops on this tour.  This tour has increased in popularity and attendance during recent years.  This will be the 14th year for this event.  It is well worth a visit.

The Christmas Church Tour is made up of mostly rural, small Christian churches in our area that open their doors for the general public to enter and see how their congregations have decorated their church sanctuaries for the Christmas season.  This year, there are 33 stops on this tour.  I daresay that is impossible for anyone to visit all 33 in one day.  It would probably be very difficult to visit them all if you managed to devote two days to the effort.  Below is a map showing the locations of the stops on the tour.

If you would like to see the names of the numbered churches on this map, you can visit the Christmas Country Church Tour Facebook page.  Their link is below:

https://www.facebook.com/christmascountrychurchtour/

The Lutheran Heritage Center & Museum is #19, with #20 being our parking lot neighbor, Trinity Lutheran Church in Altenburg.  Below is a sneak peak at the Trinity sanctuary’s decorations.  They feature a “Poinsettia Tree” which is rather unique.

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Our museum is decked out with over 50 decorated Christmas trees, with all sorts of other seasonal displays scattered here and there as well.  For the next two days, we will also have model train exhibit on display in our research library.   One can find a beautiful Christmas village in our old gallery.

The main gallery is packed with themed trees, many with historical significance.

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You can even visit our research library, which is occupied annually by our “Beer Tree”.  Gerard Fiehler and I affectionately call our library the “Man Cave”. 

We expect to have hundreds of visitors here the next two days.  Because of that, it is not likely that our normal blog posts will be possible.  If you are in the area, please stop by and see us.  We’d love to have you here.