Wishing a joyful Christmas season to you and your family. No new posts for the next couple of days, but in the meantime here are some links to Amish Christmas articles from this site and others:
USA Today article looking at Christmas in the Clare, Michigan Amish community. ‘”We have the quiet way of honoring Jesus coming,” said Simon Miller, of Clare. “Nothing to be seen by men, nothing to bring glory to ourselves.”‘
Amish Christmas customs with descriptions from the book Amish Society. ‘Amish do give gifts at Christmas, and Hostetler notes that “children who want a specific toy usually get it, but toys are generally simple and inexpensive.” While selling books in Amish communities, I can remember a number of instances when sets were tucked away by forward-looking parents as a Christmas surprise for the children.’
Amish children singing at ChristmasAmish Country News describes an Amish school Christmas program with samples of the Christmas plays, poems and songs performed by Amish children.
Christmas card giving among Amish. Interesting info in the comments. Writes Claire: ‘I have an Amish pen pal, and she has sent me a Christmas card this year which had the three wise-men on it.’ Meanwhile Tom asked his Indiana Swartzentruber Amish friends if they send cards: ‘They nicely answered, “No we don’t, it’s just not necessary, but we do
write Christmas letters to several of our close relatives.”’
Five of the Amish Cook’s favorite Christmas recipes, including “Church Windows” and “Amish Fruitcake”.
Gloria Yoder answers questions from time to time in her Amish Cook column. In her latest, she gets an interesting question from a reader: another friend and reader, Betsy, from Lebanon, Ohio…wondered if there are different levels of Amish and how we believe about our relationship with Jesus, which is so very sweet and important. Her answer: Thanks for asking Betsy, your question blessed my…
Non-Amish friendships? The allure of technology? Religious strife? These and other factors may very well play into individual decisions to leave behind an Amish faith and background. Caroline Faulkner, a professor of sociology at Lancaster’s Franklin & Marshall College, is trying to shed some light on this and related questions in a new study. In today’s guest post, Caroline examines depictions of Amish people leaving their faith and…
Reader Nicholas recently wrote in about the upcoming Anabaptist Identity Conference, which is in its 11th year. Held March 10th-12th, this year’s event takes place in Holmes County, Ohio. Here is Nicholas’ description of last year’s event, followed by the details if you’re interested in going this year: I was in attendance last year, and found it to be well worth going. Most all Anabaptist…
Jim Halverson checks in with a photo set from a Swartzentruber Amish barn-raising. This took place back in the summer as should be obvious from these photos. If you missed it, we recently took a closer look at the Amish barn-raising via Burton Buller’s excellent film The Amish Barn-Raising Day. In it, we see footage of two separate barn-raisings (in Ohio and in Pennsylvania), done…
In our interview with Nic Stoltzfus on German Lutherans To Pennsylvania Amish: The Stoltzfus Family Story, we also learned about the contribution of Nic’s father Elam, who provided many of the beautiful photos in the book. Today, Elam shares part 1 of 4 in a series he wrote on the Ausbund. This was originally published in Plain Values, a Holmes County-based magazine geared towards Amish…
“Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” ~John 3:3 (KJV) This question has come up a lot over the years and has been addressed here before (see this post from 11 years ago titled Are Swartzentruber Amish “saved”?), so I did a video on it as well….
Merry Christmas everyone, as I am no longer blogging on a regular basis anymore
Its been quite a while since I was on Amish America, and I have ended my blog Amish Stories last week. So I would like to wish all the folks on Amish America and Erik a Merry Christmas and a very healthy New Years to come. I will return to blogging sometime during the late Spring on a limited basis, and my blog Amish Stories will then become a photography only blog. So I hope to capture some of Pennsylvania’s beauty with my Kodak camera which will include Amish life as well. And no I am not leaving because of Lancaster’s Amish mafia although I may like to join them at some point to try and make some extra cash, I could use a new pair of shoes now!
Yours truly Richard from Amish Stories. http://www.Amishstories.net
Thanks for the Christmas wish Kat, and with my blog I wanted to go in a new direction with myself doing much less blogging now. I will be back but only on a part time basis, and merry Christmas again Kat and all of Erik’s readers.
And yes I confirm that I am not a spammer, well at least not anymore………lol Richard
Merry Christmas Erik and all bloggers and readers of Amish America!
I pray that God’s will would be done in our lives throughout the next year, and the years to come, and that we would all be a blessing in the lives of others around us!
Thank you Erik, for all your writing!
may you all have a most blessed and joyous christmas for tomorrow on are most blessed saviours birthday, may Jesus be ever so close to you all this coming new year. Andrea 🙂 x
Well, the Amish Christmas carolers were here, again. I really appreciate them coming. They sang a couple of carols and then went on to several of the neighbors. They left me with a jar of some kind of coffee mix and a cinnamon roll and a warm feeling in my heart. This year I shut Fritzi in the bedrooom so he couldn’t slip under my walker and get in to bug them.
Christmas Day, Mark is invited to a couple of different homes. One home for the midday meal and another home for supper. Both families kindly included me in the invitations. I’ll probably drive but Mark usually drives his horse and buggy. That way I can leave when I want and he can leave when he wants.
Mark and I want to all wish you a blessed Christmas as you celebrate the “Reason For The Season.”
Thanks for including the USA today article about Christmas
amongst some Michigan Amish. May the quote from Simon
Miller be an inspiration to each of us to “have the quiet way of honoring Jesus’ coming, nothing to be seen by men, nothing to bring glory to ourselves.”
I was out and about in my community on Christmas Eve wearing a Santa Claus hat, and a little girl asked her mother “is that Santa Claus?” and I said “No, I am just a big elf, but that’s our secret” this made the mother smile.
On Richard’s decision to redevelop his Amish Stories, I hope you continue your “Jean” series and “Martha” as well, those gave voice to Old Order family life and values which needed to be read and it shared a Christian charity that needed to be shown.
I hope Christmas day is a good day for all and is at least a little bit of a day of reflection and consideration.
One of the big changes with Amish Stories is the fact that Jeans post along with Martha is no longer being published, I wanted to get away from the grind of posting on a regular basis. So when I return in the late Spring I will only occasionally share some of my own images of country living which will include some of the Amish as well, so I wont post everyday or even every week. It was fun for a while but now I think I will enjoy having more time doing other things other than sitting behind a computer putting together posts for the blog, and time is something we all can never get back.
Hi Erik, many thanks from my corner as well. I love that I always learn something new from this blog! I’ve wondered if Ed and Ruth gave each other gifts for Christmas?!!! I hope they did. We sent a package: yes, only useful things, plus a couple of baby books for our precious new grandson. I truly hope they do not try to get out tomorrow, as the weather in fertile is brutal! As of this writing they are -14, with wind chill of -25. I pray that they have enough firewood and are warm and cozy in their little house. This Christmas has felt more real because of the birth of our grandson to this simple Amish family. It’s somehow much easier to imagine Mary and Joseph traveling and then going through childbirth in this stressful situation. All much closer to how the Amish live. Hope this makes sense! May God bless and keep each of you in this season!
Thanks for checking in Anne, I can only imagine they are having a real wintry Christmas time now in Minnesota. If you hear how they celebrated the holiday would love to hear about it, here or elsewhere. What a blessing you have had the past few years with the new grandson and new Amish family.
Hi Erik, We have not heard from the young family for about 2 weeks, so should hear soon. I’ll let you know what I find out. Hope you had a relaxing time at home and feel renewed in your love for the lamb.
Blessings,
Anne
It was wonderful to hear from you, Anne. I have been thinking of your son and his new family in MinneSNOWta! Would love to hear about how they celebrated Christmas.
I admit to being pretty concerned for them. I have a smart phone that now gives me notices of weather statements for Fertile, MN. I keep getting them! And I can’t believe the weather…one day last week they got UP to -9! And with the wind I think wind chill was -25 and colder. I worry that they don’t have enough wood, and that Ed will try to get out and get some when he should stay inside. Wish we’d focused on wood when we were there, but there was so much to do… Anyway, I don’t know you how Minnesotans do it; a whole different life than the one I know.
I can’t take the credit for MinneSNOWta, but I thought it sure was cute! I was born and raised in MN so I don’t know any different. I don’t especially care for winter and in fact now that we had a white Christmas, it could just as well melt! My husband on the other hand, loves to cross country ski and snowboard so he is enjoying all of our snow. And of course, all the down hill skiiers, snowmobilers, and ice fishermen love our winters. I do think it makes me appreciate the other three seasons that much more! We really make the most of our weekends during the Spring, Summer, and Fall and many of our Day Trips are planned in/around Amish communities. We like to stop at their shops or their stands in town and stock up on baked goods and other handmade products. I do often wonder how the Amish are able to make money when they do not have Farmer’s Market stands, etc. in the winter. I’m assuming they have to plan ahead and budget. When I asked the Amish woman in Mora that has the Comfort Community Foods in her home, she said that they were open all winter. We often take for granted the use of snowplows and snowblowers. I imagine it’s quite an undertaking for the Amish to plow their driveways. I really hope your son and his wife have enough wood to sustain them this winter. It must be so hard for you to live so far away and see the plummeting temps. Once a mother, always a mother.
Your comment reminded me of this past weekend. We went to an indoor water park about an hour north of our home and we were sitting outside in a hot tub. My son’s hair was freezing (it was about 5) and I commented “Only in Minnesota!” A mother and daughter that was also sitting in the hot tub replied that they were from AZ and planned their Christmas celebration in Northern Minnesota because they wanted a white Christmas. I was pretty shocked as I don’t think of MN as being a winter destination. But, they more I thought about it, I had MN Pride!
Now I am just relaxing and unwinding. Everything is unwrapped and all the garbage is tossed, the food has been eaten, well, a good chunk anyway. In the morning there was a dusting of snow on the ground, which was lovely, just as I thought it was gone by noon, but it was nice to wake up to snow on Christmas. Supposedly, we’re supposed to get more snow in southern Ontario for Wednesday, but we shall see.
I am working on a mystery at the moment, it’s a mystery to me, I got a scarf from a relative and I removed the tags because I plan on wearing it tomorrow if it snows or not when I go out. But I’m wondering what does sizing “O/S” mean? I figure because it’s a Canadian garment it’s bilingual – French and English, but I can’t reason out the sizing. It is a fair size scarf so I don’t think it’s “small”, what do you think?
I’ve never seen a size labeled O/S, but my guess would be it is short for Over/Sized.
We did have a somewhat interesting Christmas evening this year. Our daughter, who lives out of state, is visiting us for Christmas. She was with my wife at my wife’s family home and I was at work during the day.
A strong cold front came in during the day and dropped the temps nearly 40 degrees in a matter of about an hour & a half, but that wasn’t the interesting thing. Along with the front came wind gusts of almost 50 mph.
When my wife and daughter got home yesterday about 5:30 PM they discovered that the electricity was out. Turns out a transmission line had blown down in the high winds. So we opened Christmas presents by candle and lantern light! Had a distinctly old fashioned feel about it. May not have been an “Amish” experience, but it was a memorable one nevertheless. Fortunately the power was back up before 11:00 PM; so it wasn’t a difficult thing to endure.
Hope everyone had a joyous Christmas. Christmas Eve morning we woke to learn of the shootings and fire in Webster NY (just up the road from me). Please prayer for the fire fighters. Happier New Year.
Tom backroadstraveller.blogspot.com/
Sorry to be coming late to this post! I used to drive Amish children to school in our family van… holidays were the best, especially Christmas! All the kids ALWAYS brought me the most incredible Christmas goodies, fresh made Amish incredibleness! Miss that… Merry Christmas! 🙂
Merry Christmas
Merry Christmas, to Erik and all of the readers of this blog. I hope that everyone has a peaceful and joyous Christmas & a Happy New Year.
Merry Christmas everyone, as I am no longer blogging on a regular basis anymore
Its been quite a while since I was on Amish America, and I have ended my blog Amish Stories last week. So I would like to wish all the folks on Amish America and Erik a Merry Christmas and a very healthy New Years to come. I will return to blogging sometime during the late Spring on a limited basis, and my blog Amish Stories will then become a photography only blog. So I hope to capture some of Pennsylvania’s beauty with my Kodak camera which will include Amish life as well. And no I am not leaving because of Lancaster’s Amish mafia although I may like to join them at some point to try and make some extra cash, I could use a new pair of shoes now!
Yours truly Richard from Amish Stories. http://www.Amishstories.net
Glad you are okay
Richard,
I was just wondering the other day where you had been. I hoped that you weren’t ill or anything.
Glad to learn that it was because you were busy. Good Luck with the revised format of your site & hope you have a Marry Christmas.
Im fine health wise Kat...........
Thanks for the Christmas wish Kat, and with my blog I wanted to go in a new direction with myself doing much less blogging now. I will be back but only on a part time basis, and merry Christmas again Kat and all of Erik’s readers.
And yes I confirm that I am not a spammer, well at least not anymore………lol Richard
reply to Amish Christmas Links
Merry Christmas Erik and all bloggers and readers of Amish America!
I pray that God’s will would be done in our lives throughout the next year, and the years to come, and that we would all be a blessing in the lives of others around us!
Thank you Erik, for all your writing!
Merry Christmas & Happy New Year
To Erik and the whole Amish America community, here’s wishing you all a wonderfully happy and safe holiday week.
Merry Christmas to you all! Have a blessed holiday, mindful that Jesus is the reason for the season :o)
I don’t know what went wrong with my smiley… 🙁
Merry Christmas to everyone.
may you all have a most blessed and joyous christmas for tomorrow on are most blessed saviours birthday, may Jesus be ever so close to you all this coming new year. Andrea 🙂 x
Amish Christmas
Well, the Amish Christmas carolers were here, again. I really appreciate them coming. They sang a couple of carols and then went on to several of the neighbors. They left me with a jar of some kind of coffee mix and a cinnamon roll and a warm feeling in my heart. This year I shut Fritzi in the bedrooom so he couldn’t slip under my walker and get in to bug them.
Christmas Day, Mark is invited to a couple of different homes. One home for the midday meal and another home for supper. Both families kindly included me in the invitations. I’ll probably drive but Mark usually drives his horse and buggy. That way I can leave when I want and he can leave when he wants.
Mark and I want to all wish you a blessed Christmas as you celebrate the “Reason For The Season.”
Merry Christmas Don
Yours sure is an interesting story & I always enjoy the updates. I almost feel as if I know you and Mark, too, for that matter.
Give ol’ Fritzi a pat on the head for me & tell him that I said Merry Christmas to him as well!
Seconded…and Don enjoy your meals tomorrow, sounds like you have the transport part all worked out.
I wholeheartedly agree!
Thanks for including the USA today article about Christmas
amongst some Michigan Amish. May the quote from Simon
Miller be an inspiration to each of us to “have the quiet way of honoring Jesus’ coming, nothing to be seen by men, nothing to bring glory to ourselves.”
Appreciating all the kind wishes and thanks to all those who checked in to let know how things are going this Christmas season 🙂
I was out and about in my community on Christmas Eve wearing a Santa Claus hat, and a little girl asked her mother “is that Santa Claus?” and I said “No, I am just a big elf, but that’s our secret” this made the mother smile.
On Richard’s decision to redevelop his Amish Stories, I hope you continue your “Jean” series and “Martha” as well, those gave voice to Old Order family life and values which needed to be read and it shared a Christian charity that needed to be shown.
I hope Christmas day is a good day for all and is at least a little bit of a day of reflection and consideration.
Merry Christmas Shom......
One of the big changes with Amish Stories is the fact that Jeans post along with Martha is no longer being published, I wanted to get away from the grind of posting on a regular basis. So when I return in the late Spring I will only occasionally share some of my own images of country living which will include some of the Amish as well, so I wont post everyday or even every week. It was fun for a while but now I think I will enjoy having more time doing other things other than sitting behind a computer putting together posts for the blog, and time is something we all can never get back.
Richard from http://www.Amishstories.net
Hi Erik, many thanks from my corner as well. I love that I always learn something new from this blog! I’ve wondered if Ed and Ruth gave each other gifts for Christmas?!!! I hope they did. We sent a package: yes, only useful things, plus a couple of baby books for our precious new grandson. I truly hope they do not try to get out tomorrow, as the weather in fertile is brutal! As of this writing they are -14, with wind chill of -25. I pray that they have enough firewood and are warm and cozy in their little house. This Christmas has felt more real because of the birth of our grandson to this simple Amish family. It’s somehow much easier to imagine Mary and Joseph traveling and then going through childbirth in this stressful situation. All much closer to how the Amish live. Hope this makes sense! May God bless and keep each of you in this season!
Thanks for checking in Anne, I can only imagine they are having a real wintry Christmas time now in Minnesota. If you hear how they celebrated the holiday would love to hear about it, here or elsewhere. What a blessing you have had the past few years with the new grandson and new Amish family.
Hi Erik, We have not heard from the young family for about 2 weeks, so should hear soon. I’ll let you know what I find out. Hope you had a relaxing time at home and feel renewed in your love for the lamb.
Blessings,
Anne
It was wonderful to hear from you, Anne. I have been thinking of your son and his new family in MinneSNOWta! Would love to hear about how they celebrated Christmas.
I love the “MinneSNOWta”…really cute!
I admit to being pretty concerned for them. I have a smart phone that now gives me notices of weather statements for Fertile, MN. I keep getting them! And I can’t believe the weather…one day last week they got UP to -9! And with the wind I think wind chill was -25 and colder. I worry that they don’t have enough wood, and that Ed will try to get out and get some when he should stay inside. Wish we’d focused on wood when we were there, but there was so much to do… Anyway, I don’t know you how Minnesotans do it; a whole different life than the one I know.
I can’t take the credit for MinneSNOWta, but I thought it sure was cute! I was born and raised in MN so I don’t know any different. I don’t especially care for winter and in fact now that we had a white Christmas, it could just as well melt! My husband on the other hand, loves to cross country ski and snowboard so he is enjoying all of our snow. And of course, all the down hill skiiers, snowmobilers, and ice fishermen love our winters. I do think it makes me appreciate the other three seasons that much more! We really make the most of our weekends during the Spring, Summer, and Fall and many of our Day Trips are planned in/around Amish communities. We like to stop at their shops or their stands in town and stock up on baked goods and other handmade products. I do often wonder how the Amish are able to make money when they do not have Farmer’s Market stands, etc. in the winter. I’m assuming they have to plan ahead and budget. When I asked the Amish woman in Mora that has the Comfort Community Foods in her home, she said that they were open all winter. We often take for granted the use of snowplows and snowblowers. I imagine it’s quite an undertaking for the Amish to plow their driveways. I really hope your son and his wife have enough wood to sustain them this winter. It must be so hard for you to live so far away and see the plummeting temps. Once a mother, always a mother.
Your comment reminded me of this past weekend. We went to an indoor water park about an hour north of our home and we were sitting outside in a hot tub. My son’s hair was freezing (it was about 5) and I commented “Only in Minnesota!” A mother and daughter that was also sitting in the hot tub replied that they were from AZ and planned their Christmas celebration in Northern Minnesota because they wanted a white Christmas. I was pretty shocked as I don’t think of MN as being a winter destination. But, they more I thought about it, I had MN Pride!
Now that that’s over and done with
Now I am just relaxing and unwinding. Everything is unwrapped and all the garbage is tossed, the food has been eaten, well, a good chunk anyway. In the morning there was a dusting of snow on the ground, which was lovely, just as I thought it was gone by noon, but it was nice to wake up to snow on Christmas. Supposedly, we’re supposed to get more snow in southern Ontario for Wednesday, but we shall see.
I am working on a mystery at the moment, it’s a mystery to me, I got a scarf from a relative and I removed the tags because I plan on wearing it tomorrow if it snows or not when I go out. But I’m wondering what does sizing “O/S” mean? I figure because it’s a Canadian garment it’s bilingual – French and English, but I can’t reason out the sizing. It is a fair size scarf so I don’t think it’s “small”, what do you think?
Happy Happy and have a good sleep.
S-H-O-M, would O/S mean One Size fits all?
Hmmm, was intrigued with this as well, SHOM and did a google search. Got quite a few people saying it meant ‘one size’.
Oops, forgot to add this to my comment: Glad to learn what the acronym SHOM stands for! I believe I’ve seen it/you on my own blog a few times. (-:
Over sized maybe?
I’ve never seen a size labeled O/S, but my guess would be it is short for Over/Sized.
We did have a somewhat interesting Christmas evening this year. Our daughter, who lives out of state, is visiting us for Christmas. She was with my wife at my wife’s family home and I was at work during the day.
A strong cold front came in during the day and dropped the temps nearly 40 degrees in a matter of about an hour & a half, but that wasn’t the interesting thing. Along with the front came wind gusts of almost 50 mph.
When my wife and daughter got home yesterday about 5:30 PM they discovered that the electricity was out. Turns out a transmission line had blown down in the high winds. So we opened Christmas presents by candle and lantern light! Had a distinctly old fashioned feel about it. May not have been an “Amish” experience, but it was a memorable one nevertheless. Fortunately the power was back up before 11:00 PM; so it wasn’t a difficult thing to endure.
Hope everyone had a joyous Christmas. Christmas Eve morning we woke to learn of the shootings and fire in Webster NY (just up the road from me). Please prayer for the fire fighters. Happier New Year.
Tom backroadstraveller.blogspot.com/
Amish Traditions
Sorry to be coming late to this post! I used to drive Amish children to school in our family van… holidays were the best, especially Christmas! All the kids ALWAYS brought me the most incredible Christmas goodies, fresh made Amish incredibleness! Miss that… Merry Christmas! 🙂