Rediscovering a Tradition and its Meaning

This week between holidays is for family, friends and feasting on leftovers. It’s for lingering with coffee and cookies, cuddling our pets and ignoring the alarm. A new calendar will roll in on its shiny wheels soon enough. For this week and possibly for this week alone, we rest, rejuvenate and relax. We watch movies, binge TV shows, and eat pizza in pajamas. Guilt about perpetual productivity takes a holiday. We have time to read more carefully the Christmas notes and letters from friends far away that arrived when we were too distracted to pay attention to them. Holiday lights stay on all day.

Holidays are also for memories, sweet and bittersweet. I remembered a tradition from our family that I had not thought about in a very long time. Since my father was the sole proprietor of a small retail business, we did not have time for elaborate traditions or holiday trips.

However, every year, we did have one standout tradition. It started at a local diner. If you know anything about New Jersey diners, you can think of chrome exterior, warm friendly interior, booths with colorful seats, a nickel jukebox and big menus with plastic pages.

Then we would go down the highway to a small white church almost engulfed by the development around it. The church was open in the evenings around Christmas. We waited our turn in the softly lit sanctuary. We would be ushered down to the church basement in small groups to stand around a dimly lit platform that took up almost the whole downstairs space. A recording would come on, with a narrator slowly and carefully telling the Christmas story. As each part was told, a section of the platform would gradually rotate and light up. As the last section turned over, a bright star appeared over the manger. The hushed group would admire the whole hand-painted scene unfolded and glimmering with little electric lights. Compared to today’s technologies, it was very basic. But craftspersons​ from that congregation had made this display and welcomed visitors to it for many years. It was probably considered innovative since it was motorized and electrified.

This was a Christmas “putz” or 3D display built to explain the Christmas story to children. “Putz” is derived from a German word. It is pronounced like “puts” not “putts” and does not share meaning with the slang term in Yiddish. This little church was the only one of its faith in our immediate area. We were located not far from the Pennsylvania Dutch community in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, which Moravians founded in the early 1700s, and this church was a branch of it. Moravians were German-speaking Protestants who came to Pennsylvania for religious freedom like the Quakers before them. Moravians were the very first Protestants, breaking away from the Roman Catholic Church​ in 1457 before Martin Luther nailed his 99 Theses to the Wittenberg church door.

Moravian churches are very plain inside, lacking traditional adornment. The story of Jesus’s birth is central to their faith. “Jesus as the reason for the season” is more than a slogan for them. They see the time and effort spent creating the putz to which adults and children flock as an important missionary effort. The church members were not fussy about snowy children’s boots or wet mittens soiling their church. Volunteers guided people up and down the stairs. This was a proud tradition and they were graciously hospitable to one and all.

I was happy to learn by searching online that this congregation is still very much alive (Palmyra Moravian Church, Cinnaminson, New Jersey).

If you have set up a Nativity scene on a table or a little Christmas village under your tree, you can thank the Moravians.

In a skit by clean and family-friendly comedian Nate Bargatze, he plays an angel arriving at the manger. He tries to describe the practices of modern-day Christmas, including Santa. At one point, the Joseph character asks the angel what percentage of Christmas is Santa and what part is Jesus. He replies straight-faced, “ 90-10.” The audience erupts in laughter at the all-too-true​ reply.

During this in-between week, maybe we could take some of our free time to gaze quietly on a Nativity scene either in our own homes or in a nearby church and quietly say a prayer of thanks for the Moravians.