Christmas At the Rauhe Haus

based on Elihu Burritt’s “Christmas in Germany” (c. 1850) You find a hand-built chapel among small homes constructed by children. But what children – vicious young ne’er-do-wells from a Dickens novel, pickpockets and worse; if not murderers, at least boys handy with cudgel or knife; petty thieves; girls just as bad. And here they’ve planted trees, and a garden around the cottages they built. Ducks and geese in the pond are no happier, this December morning, than the children who’ve invited everyone from miles around to help them celebrate. People arrive by carriage to sit on hard benches in the chapel with its Christmas tree alight with tapers. And who sits at the table of honor with a linen cloth? "The poorest of the poor, the lamest of the lame, the blindest of the blind, the oldest of the aged. "Pauper guests from the hovels, hedges, and highways of the neighborhood." How amazed you were, Elihu, who’d traveled among society and knew its ways, to witness this turnabout; how children saved from the ditch, and raised with love, would want to share their bounty – their hand-baked bread, cakes, and confections, hand-knit stockings, wooden shoes. Their joy.