My Boyhood Christmas in Jefferson City

A fourth-century bishop by the name of Nicholas was known for giving gifts to people secretly. He was deemed a saint, and his death date, December 6, has ever since been known as his feast day, St. Nicholas Day, in Catholic and Orthodox churches. For centuries Christians gave gifts on December 6.

In the sixteenth century Martin Luther, the great reformer of the church, insisted on going back to holy scripture, and since St. Nicholas was not in the Bible, Luther said that the date of Christ’s birth should be used for the annual practice of gift giving. At that time, December 25 was the recognized date of Christ’s birth, so Christians in Germany shifted gift giving from St. Nicholas Day, December 6, to Christmas Day, December 25.

But not everyone agreed to this. Some German Christians followed Luther’s lead to use December 25, but others continued with December 6. Some families used both! St. Nicholas brought gifts to children on December 6, and the Christ Child (Christkind, later called Kris Kringle) brought gifts on December 25. My immigrant grandparents, of the German Evangelical Church in the Rhineland, were of this “double tradition.”

This oversimplified background is necessary to understand how Christmas came to a little five-year old boy in Jefferson City: By the 1930s in America, “St. Nicholas” had become Santa Claus, who came on Christmas Eve, and the guy who visited on December 6 was “Kris Kringle,” who still looked a lot like St. Nicholas.

On December 6 my brother and I used straight pins to hang our long socks on the beaverboard wall that enclosed our attic bedroom. We could have set our little shoes outside the bedroom door, but it didn’t take much experimentation to discover that our long winter socks stretched and could hold more than our little leather shoes.

So it was Kris Kringle who came during the night of December 6—but wait! He wasn’t alone! Accompanying him was mean ol’ Knecht Ruprecht. That was the only name we heard. Of course, we never saw these two characters. If we had been good boys, good Kris Kringle left hard candy and maybe an apple or orange in our socks, but we sure preferred the candy. If we had not been good, then that mean ol’ Knecht Ruprecht left us sticks, or maybe pieces of coal.

One December 6, we were shocked to find sticks in our socks! We didn’t know what we had done that was so bad, but it sure scared us. Maybe our aging grandparents, who lived with us, overheard us saying something bad, or maybe we hadn’t done our chores. Whatever the reason, those sticks did the trick, and we shaped up during the next couple of weeks before real Christmas. Parents, you see, used December 6 as a warning for kids to behave during those very busy days before Christmas.

When Christmas morning came, we had gifts galore. All of grandpa and grandma’s children (our aunts and uncles) and their children (our cousins) came to Jefferson City for Christmas. They all converged on our house on Christmas Day. Since my brother and I were the youngest grandchildren in this crowd (during 1938–1941 we ranged from 4 to 10), all those relatives gave us extra attention.

As the years went on, St. Nicholas Day, December 6, was dropped but not forgotten. At least, not by me. Each year, come December 6, I remember those sticks I got in 1939. The image of them in my socks hanging on the wall reminds me to shape up. It makes me think of the real meaning of Christmas and inspires me to give gifts to others.

Today, few remember December 6 as the original day for Christians to give gifts. Absolutely everything is now concentrated on December 25. Christmas celebrations and songs stop the next day, people take down their Christmas trees, and by New Year’s Day, most public traces of Christmas are long gone.

Yet another old tradition is to continue the Christmas season through the Twelve Days of Christmas, which begin on Christmas Day and end on January 6, Epiphany, when the Three Kings arrived bearing gifts (and you supposedly get twelve drummers drumming). Today, marketers would have you think that the Twelve Days comprise the final twelve shopping days before Christmas! Many European countries, however, still celebrate the arrival of the Wise Men on January 6.

Considering how few Americans observe the Twelve Days of Christmas, special congratulations are due to Jefferson City’s Central United Church of Christ, which has always kept its Christmas stars on its tall steeple shining until Epiphany, January 6!

Merry Christmas from the Old Munichburg Association! Consider a gift membership for your loved ones this year. It’s non-cluttering, non-fattening, and gives both the giver and the recipient a warm feeling inside!

Copyright 2012 by Walter A. Schroeder.

German Christmas in Jefferson City One Hundred Years Ago

The German immigrants to Jefferson City brought their Christmas traditions with them, chief of which was the Christmas tree. As early as 1871, just a few years after the Civil War officially ended, the local newspapers reported that the various German organizations, like the Germania Club, Turners, and singing societies, held Christmas parties in their halls with Christmas trees, singing, and dancing. For Christmas 1871, the just opened public school at Monroe and Miller, which had strong German leadership, held a Christmas party with gifts and singing. It was reported that 1,200 persons, including 600 children, attended after standing in line for hours to get in. It may have been the first public appearance of a Christmas tree in Jefferson City, because Christmas trees were not yet popular on the American scene at this time.

German traditions were always part of the Christmas observances in all four German churches in Jefferson City: St. Peter Catholic; Trinity Lutheran, then at Monroe and McCarty; Central Evangelical (now Central United Church of Christ); and the German Methodist Church on the corner of Broadway and Elm. The latter two are in Munichburg. These churches had Christmas services on three separate days: Christmas Eve especially for children, Christmas morning, and on the day after Christmas, called Zweite Weihnachten or “Second Christmas.”

In December 1891 the Evangelical women held a Christmas supper and bazaar in their new church, just finished the month before. According to the newspaper, the supper cost 25 cents, and the women sold numerous items suitable for Christmas gifts. In 1906, when many homes in Jefferson City were still without electricity, Central Evangelical Church had a Christmas tree with electric lights that dazzled everyone. Candles had been on their annual Christmas trees since the beginning, and the congregation was happy to get rid of them because of the fire danger, let alone the trouble of lighting and extinguishing them all. There were no commercial Christmas tree lots then, and members of the four German congregations provided cut cedars from their farms.

At Trinity Lutheran, the Christmas Eve service was devoted to the children. Children of the Lutheran parochial school filed into church for the impressive Christmas Eve service, where they sang in German and one by one recited memorized Bible verses to tell the Christmas story. Afterwards, they were treated with small, brown paper sacks of hard candy. Then they went back to their homes to open gifts, which had been mysteriously placed under the Christmas tree while they were in church.

In the smaller German Methodist Church, the Sunday School children sang traditional German Christmas songs like Kling, Glockchen, Kling-a-ling-a-ling (Ring, little bells, ring-a-ling-a-ling). The young children, dressed all in white like the Christkind (Christ Child), stood in front of the congregation on Christmas Eve and rang little bells while they sang. In German tradition, ringing bells announced the arrival of the Christ Child in our midst.

Later, the children were given hard candy in little containers made to look like Santa Claus. (One of these is still displayed today at Christmas in that same church building, now a residence, along with a 120-year-old German Weihnachtspyramide, a revolving Christmas pyramid tree, also a German tradition.)

Christmas became commercialized in Jefferson City by 1900, according to the great explosion of newspaper ads for Christmas gifts. High Street merchants put Santa Claus in their December ads and announced the best prices for clothing and candy for Christmas gifts. But there were very, very few ads for toys!

Businesses in German Munichburg also went commercial for Christmas in the beginning years of the 1900s. The big Moerschel Brewery on Dunklin suggested giving a case of Muenchener beer for Christmas, which you could pick up at the brewery or have delivered to your residence by horse-drawn wagon, at no charge. Busch’s Florist began advertising cut Christmas trees for those who did not want to go out into the country and cut their own.

Grocery stores, saloons, even barbershops gave out free turkeys to attract business. In 1912 the newspaper reported the Southside pool hall at 704 Jefferson Street gave away 35 fresh turkeys on one December Wednesday alone. Can you imagine that? Were they alive? Fresh killed? There were no frozen turkeys in those days. And on a weekday, in a pool hall?

What may have been Jefferson City’s first community Christmas tree was described in the December 14, 1915, newspaper. The carpenters’ union built a 50 x 50 foot platform for a community Christmas tree 30 feet high (that’s three stories high!) on the courthouse lawn. What held it up? Did it have electric lights and decorations? Did the mayor give a speech?

German Christmas traditions flourished in individual homes. The Germans had small, tabletop cedar Christmas trees in their homes well before they became common in the general population. The candles were mounted in small metal candleholders that were secured to the branches with small clips. They were lit only on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, because the candles didn’t last very long and people celebrated Christmas as only a one-day event. (It didn’t begin the day after Thanksgiving!) The tree was decorated with red paper bells, papier-mâché birds, fruit, nuts, pinecones, and other symbols of nature. Delicate, blown-glass ornaments imported from Germany became available about the same time that electric lights came into homes, around 1890–1910.




Reformer Martin Luther was successful in convincing Germans to shift the date for Christmas gift-giving from December 6, the Catholic feast day of St. Nicholas, to December 25, the accepted date of Christ’s birth. But German families in Jefferson City continued to use December 6 as Kriss Kringle night, when St. Nicholas’s helper visited houses to see if the boys and girls were being good or bad. I can personally vouch that one year I got a lump of coal in my shoes that I set at my bedroom door on December 6. That was a serious sign to shape up before Christmas.




Some families gave presents around the Christmas tree on Christmas Eve, in keeping with the visit of Luther’s Christ Child to the family. Others, perhaps influenced by Clement Moore’s popular poem, “A Visit from Saint Nicholas,” in which Santa Claus came down a chimney during the night, waited until Christmas morning to open presents.

The traditional Christmas dinner in Germany centered around a Christmas goose, but immigrants to Jefferson City quickly replaced it with the abundant American turkey. Traditional German stollen (candied fruit and nut bread) and cookies still highlight many Munichburg and Jefferson City Christmases today.




Cookies include lepkuchen, a honey or molasses cookie, which is made from different recipes according to what part of Germany the family came from; springerli, the square, anise-flavored cookie with a delicate pattern imprinted on it; and pfeffernuesse, or pepper nuts, a spicy cookie that may have black pepper in it.




Frohe Weihnachten! Merry Christmas!

Copyright 2011 by Walter A. Schroeder.

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Best wishes for 2012! Make a resolution this year to help the efforts of the Old Munichburg Association, or to get involved with your own local community, wherever you are! We bid you peace.