Another Small Tale of Sisters House in Salem

by John Hutton
 
Christmas
Maus
There was once a small mouse in a small town called Salem, at the Edge of the Wilderness. The mouse was
named Maus Kraus. She was a very smart maus: she knew how to sew, and she went to school every day
with her great friend Catherine, who was the teacher in the Girls School. Sister Catherine called her
Sister Maus, and you may already know about her from reading her first book. This new story tells
how Sister Maus learned about Christmas and discovered other ways, indeed, to be useful.

Dedicated to Natalie, Marco, Luscinda, and everyone in the Sister Maus Fan Club.

Christmas MAUS

Text and illustrations copyright © 2008 by John Hutton

Published by Salem Academy and College
P.O. Box 10548, Winston-Salem, North Carolina 27101-0548
www.salemacademy.com and www.salem.edu
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.
This publication may not be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the permission in writing of the publishers.

Typeset and designed in the United States of America by Carrie Leigh Dickey
Printed and bound in the United States of America by Keiger Printing Company, Inc.
FIRST LIMITED EDITION, first printing

ISBN 978-0-9789608-1-0
Another Small Tale of Sisters House in Salem

S a le m Ac a de m y a nd C olle g e
2008
 and t is the
It is long ago in Old America, again –

morning of hristmas ve. Sister

Maus wakes up in her cozy mouse hole! She must help Sister Catherine decorate

Sisters House. A little higher, please, Sister Maus! Everything must be beautiful this

afternoon for the Love Feast for the children of the Girls School.

ome with me to the bakery, Sister Maus,”

says Sister Catherine. “I am afraid we do not have
enough cookies!”

Sister

Catherine pushes through the deep snow – across the Square – past the Boys School

– to Brother Winkler’s bakery. Sister Catherine is tall and strong. Snow won’t stop

her! Sister Maus is glad to be warm and dry in the pocket of an apron.
 n the bakery, everything smells delicious. There are so many cookies to

make before Christmas. Perhaps the bakers could use some help.
 Sister Catherine has so much to do that she has

quite forgotten Sister Maus and has left her behind. “Help, help!” cries
Sister Maus. How will she get home through the deep snow?
 omeone has found her – it is Brother Maus! “My name is
Tom,” he says. “Please follow me!” He leads her through
a snow tunnel to the Boys School where he lives. The tunnel is surprisingly warm

and dry.
 he Boys School mice are very happy to meet

Sister Maus. They have often heard of her and how well

she sews. She has much in common with their teacher,

Brother Samuel Crumbs. “I, too, came down

from Bethlehem,” he says, “but not in a sewing
basket! I traveled in a trunk full of books.”
 ister Maus wants to thank her new friends for their

kindness. She will help them build their Christmas

Pyramid. She finds –

Some GREENERY

Some POPCORN

Some CANDLES
AND-An APPLE!

he Pyramid is finished. Sehr Schone! Very beautiful,

:

Sister Maus!
 fter supper, Brother Samuel decides that they all will go together to take

Sister Maus home. He has heard that the decorations at Sisters House are especially

pretty this year.

he streets have been cleared of snow and

are full of wagons and people. “Be careful!”

whispers Tom Maus. He and Sister Maus stroll arm in

arm across the Square and soon arrive at Sisters House.

 special back stair takes them directly to the Saal – the

main room.

ow lucky! The Christmas Eve service has just begun. Candles are

everywhere.
 he Mouse scholars especially admire the Putz – the Nativity

Scene – under the tree.

t is time to put the Baby Jesus in his Manger. But where can the

manger be? The children have been playing with it – and have lost it!

as it fallen behind the organ?” asks Tom.

“Here it is!” squeaks Sister Maus. They carry it back to the tree. And so
a place is found at last for the Baby Jesus – in his little manger, and in our hearts!
 veryone is surprised and very pleased by the helpful mice. Frau Kater

is especially proud to know Sister Maus. How very useful she is – and so are her

companions from the Boys School!

 he children recite their Christmas verses and receive their

gifts. Presents and cookies for everyone – including visitors! CRUNCH,

CRUNCH, CRUNCH!

nd what a wonderful present it is to have Sister Maus safe at

home!
 uf Wiedersehen! Farewell to new friends! Farewell to old friends!

AND –
 Special Thanks

Salem Academy and College gratefully acknowledges the

generous support of the Sam N. Carter and Pauline Carter Fund

of the Winston-Salem Foundation and grantmaking partner

Charlie Hemrick for making this book possible.

Special thanks are also due to Penny Niven, Gwynne Taylor,

Jane Carmichael, Paula Locklair, and Johanna Brown for their

encouragement in bringing this project to completion.

Author’s Notes

Christmas for Sister Maus, like Sister Maus, is a book based on the cookies, candles, strung popcorn and other ornaments. The
early days of Salem Academy and College, an academic institution for Christmas pyramid would be displayed on a table.
women founded in 1772 in the village of Salem in the Moravian
settlement of Wachovia, in northwestern North Carolina. The Single The Saal, or ‘main room’, in Sisters House was a large room on the
Sisters House, where both stories take place, actually still exists on second floor of the building, used for group meetings and religious
the Salem College campus in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and services for the Single Sisters who lived and worked there. In the
visitors are encouraged to come to see Sister Maus’s historic mouse years before 1800, when Salem’s Home Church was built, Saals in
hole! Please see the Author’s Notes in Sister Maus for more general the Gemeinhaus, the Single Sisters House and the Single Brothers
historical information about Salem. House provided needed worship space for the community. The
Saal in Sisters House has a very beautiful organ made by Henry
The story of Christmas Maus is woven from many historical threads Erben in 1839. I decided to have the mice find the Baby Jesus’s lost
drawn from the early days of Salem Academy and College. The manger behind this marvelous instrument, even if it is somewhat
beautiful Christmas traditions of the Moravian founders of late in date.
Salem are the starting point for the present tale.
Moravian Love Feast worship services took place both on Christmas
The twelve-pointed star found on the front cover is a striking Eve and on Christmas Day in these rooms. A Christmas Eve service
decoration long connected with the Moravians. The first example was conducted for children at five o’clock, and another service for
was constructed by a Moravian teacher and his pupils in the families at seven o’clock on that day. The scene in Christmas Maus
mid-nineteenth century as a geometry exercise, and such stars shows what a special Christmas Eve afternoon children’s service
quickly became associated with Advent and Christmas decorations. might have been like for the students in the Girls School and their
Its display here is somewhat anachronistic: Christmas Maus takes parents.
place ca. 1785 – but the star is used in this story to honor the
tradition, so widespread today. The Saal in Sisters House in the book is generously decorated in good
late 18th and early 19th century Moravian fashion, with wreaths,
Sister Catherine’s and Sister Maus’s adornment of Sisters House with garlands of greens, and numerous candles. Later in the 19th century,
greens and small decorated trees is an old tradition dating from the candles decorated with red ribbons were often used in Salem for
earliest days of Moravian settlement in America. The greens were Christmas celebrations, and these have become so connected with
gathered on family outings to the countryside, and used to festoon the season in modern times that I have taken the liberty of using
walls, windows, and in some cases entire rooms. Tree decoration, them in my drawings rather than the plainer candles that would
which started as early as 1748 in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, began have been used ca. 1785.
simply at first and eventually came to include popcorn, apples,
candles, and small inscribed watercolor drawings in the 19th Part of every Moravian Christmas – then and now – was a Putz,
century. or manger scene. The Putz was traditionally centered on the
Holy Family, but also included a wide range of other elements –
Cookies were an important part of Moravian Christmas festivities, buildings often mimicking real buildings in the town, fictitious
both for treats and for decoration. They were made in many hills and streams, shepherds, the Magi, and so forth. A typical Putz
whimsical shapes, were often used to adorn trees or wall displays, would be located at the base of the Christmas tree, and would
and were given as presents to children on Christmas Eve and occasionally be surrounded by its own fence. The Baby Jesus would
Christmas Day. The Winkler Bakery in Old Salem, which celebrated usually be put into his manger in the Putz on Christmas morning,
its 200th anniversary in 2007, would have been a ready source of but I am imagining that indulgent parents might have allowed
extra cookies for hosts – like Sister Catherine – who needed more the children to anticipate His coming on Christmas Eve as well.
than their own kitchens could provide! It is a source of delicious
treats to this day, and welcomes visitors. Elizabeth Winkler, the An interesting feature of Salem Christmas Eve celebrations was
wife of Salem’s first professional baker, briefly taught at the Girls recitations at the end of the service by the students of the Girls
School before her marriage, and could possibly have known School. These might be as simple as the reading of a few Bible
Catherine Sehner, one of the two early Salem teachers on whom the verses, or as complex as very elaborate dialogues when several students
fictional Sister Catherine was based. explained the most important elements of their Christian faith.
After the recitations, presents would be exchanged. In the early
In addition to Winkler Bakery, another Old Salem building years of Salem these would include such simple treats as fruit, nuts,
mentioned in this story is the Boys School. It is located a short cookies, candles, and small watercolor wreaths of flowers, suitably
– and mouse accessible – distance from the bakery across an open inscribed with scripture. These last items would also often be hung
courtyard. Moravian educators in Salem established schools for both on trees as decorations. The ‘Christmas card’ given to the reader by
boys and girls in the late 18th century, but only the Girls School Sister and Brother Maus on the previous page is my illustration of
has survived to the present day, as Salem Academy and College. The this tradition.
‘mouse scholars’ classroom was modeled on an early 19th century
drawing thought to show a Moravian classroom.

A Moravian Christmas decoration less well known today than

Moravian stars is the Christmas pyramid constructed by Sister Maus John Hutton was educated at Princeton, Harvard and the University
and her new friends in the Boys School. This striking object took of London. He has written and illustrated several books for children,
the form of a pyramidal framework of wood with several including Sister Maus (2006), and has taught in the Art Department
shelves which would then be filled with a variety of greens, fruits, at Salem College since 1990.
 
Another Small Tale of Sisters House in Salem

by John Hutton