I am not presently in Altenburg and have a busy Sunday schedule with a granddaughter, so you are once again getting a post from the past. In fact, the attached story is the very first one that I published on December 15th after our new website was established in early 2016.

For a long time, I think parents have been using not just the Gospel message around Christmas time concerning the birth of a Savior, but also injected a Law message into the preparations for the Christmas season. I guess the concept of Santa Claus keeping a naughty list could be put into this category. Children have for a long time been advised to keep their behavior record clean prior to the coming of Santa. In recent years, Elf on the Shelf has been used to potentially keep children behaving properly during this season. The Christmas tradition of a character named Knecht Ruprecht showing up in the days before Christmas to make children accountable for knowing their Christmas memory work is one that has pretty much disappeared. I am getting up there in years, and I have no recollection of any such feared person being a part of my childhood, so I figure it is a tradition that came to an end in the Lutheran community a long time ago.

Just a quick reminder on another subject. This coming Thursday and Friday, December 19th and 20th, our museum and its Christmas display will be part of the annual Christmas Country Church Tour. On those 2 days, our museum will be open from 10 am until 9 pm. It would be a great place for visitors to begin their tour with us instead of waiting until the starting time for other churches later in the afternoon. Our Christmas exhibit is an incredible sight to see.