‘Peace on Earth good will to all’
Of all the materialistic Christmas celebrations PA Dutch people engage in, from Saint Nick or Santa Claus, to handing out boxes of candy or giving out oranges at Sunday schools, I have always felt old time farmers who set out hay in the barnyard the night before Christmas had the humanitarian spirit of the Universal Lord who preached a world civilization of Peace on earth good will to man and beast.
Among the religiously oriented PA Dutch people, who looked forward to Christmas and the meaning of the Christ child, were humble rural farmers who knew that their existence was dependent on Mother Nature and a merciful God to survive on planet earth. Humility was a hard lesson learned, considering America lives in a temperate climatic zone in which winter and summer could victimize human existence beyond one’s ability to survive, let alone the creatures on this earth plain, in which we all share in a benevolent God.
Thus, during Colonial times, our forefathers who were thankful for having survived the voyage to America were a humble lot, never taking things for granted, but always having faith in God and following his humanitarian principles. Sharing their wisdom and food with farm animals in as fertile a territory as Pennsylvania, Rhinelanders, who sometimes built homes that also accommodated farm animals, looked after these beasts almost as equals. Any PA Dutch person whose responsibility it was to feed the farm animals on Christmas Eve in the moon light over the barnyard knows of the communion between their Christian faith and its recollection of the Nativity scene where the Christ child is laid in the humble straw manger in Bethlehem. It is a sacred feeling as one feeds his or her animals in God’s kingdom, pondering peace on earth good will toward man.
To a PA Dutch ethnic person, household pets and domestic animals take on significance at Christmas time as they share their humanitarian holiday spirit with both man and beast. Christian shepherds of a kind, who have not lost the meaning of the Holy Nativity, even go to the extent of sharing food and shelter with Mother Nature’s creatures. As a young farmer who had two horses to hitch to his farm wagons and buggies, I choose to hitch up my buggy to a spirited steed named Lightening. Living on my mother’s farm outside of Macungie, Lehigh County, I enjoyed driving in the countryside past Huff’s Church all the way over to the Fredericksville Hotel to visit with Alma and Russ Stahl, the owners. Familiar with several farmers along the way, I would stop at their farms to see how they were doing.
Lightening enjoyed having a rest stop, and my farm friends were amazed that I had hitched up one of my horses, and actually could drive it to Fredericksville. The other horse, named Thunder, was on the heavy side, and did not like to drive. After awhile, when I would hitch Lightening up he knew where we were going. A rather fast horse, he was wise that when we stopped along our route he sometimes would get an apple or treat from one of the people we visited. One December weekend I had to meet a friend at Fredericksville and was late hitching Lightening up, but I thought that his fast gait on the road would make up for the lost time. Well, unbeknownst to me, Lightening had memorized all the farm friends we had visited on our previous trips, and turned into their driveways automatically. Lightening became stubborn, not allowing me to miss any farmer I knew as we past Huffs Church to Fredericksville. But, at least when
To a PA Dutch ethnic person, household pets and domestic animals take on significance at Christmas time as they share their humanitarian holiday spirit with both man and beast.
I arrived at Fredericksville Hotel Alma and Russ made sure my driving horse received his share of treats, since Russ owned a donkey himself and always had extra feed.
According to the Irwin M. Bering Boyhood Memories manuscript (1880-90), living in Weisenberg Township Lehigh County, his PA Dutch father, on Christmas Eve, would go to the barn to put out hay, corn and other feed so that the dew that would fall from Heaven that night would fall on this feed, which was then fed to the livestock Christmas morning, and would protect their good health until the next Christmas day (Muhlenberg College Library Collection, Allentown). This family folk tradition going back decades, known as “Heaven dew,” only falls on Christmas night, as recorded in Alfred Shoemaker’s Christmas in Pennsylvania, 1959.
When three or four centuries ago courageous men and women left the Old World for the New World following Christopher Columbus, they did so with optimism and heartfelt thanks to their Creator, believing that they could make their new lives better than in old world culture, taking a sea voyage under a vast starlit heaven, which proved to be a universe greater than they realized. Among the immigrants that cultivated Pennsylvania from the Rhine Valley of Europe were farmers so thankful to God, they shared his blessings with their livestock. Primitive farmers in a new country, on Christmas Eve when this religious group celebrated Christ’s birth, some humble PA Dutch farmers placed hay from their brimming barns out in the barnyard. The next day, after the Christmas dew had fallen on this feed, it was fed to the farmer’s livestock, a sort of remembrance of man and beast’s humility to their creator.
This is much the same way humans in the New World looked forward to a new world civilization, without wars and injustices against religions or race and economic status. It is a legacy William Penn had offered the Rhineland farmers when he invited them to come to Pennsylvania in the 16th Century. As a humble PA Dutchman, I hope that the Christmas dew that falls from the heaven in 2015 will enlighten us all in 2016 to become a wiser and more benevolent world civilization, one that will finally become a Utopian model of Peace on Earth good will toward men!