Where Christmas lasts year round

To the Editor:

I have heard people say they wish Christmas was every day of the year. Sometimes, Christmas in July is promoted. Others, complain that the commercial aspect of Christmas starts too early. For all the people that like to have Christmas all year long, I know a place where every day is Christmas. The town of Frankenmuth, Mich., was founded in 1845. This small town of 5,000 has the largest Christmas store in the world. The store is one and a half football fields long. In 1945 Wally Bronner started a small Christmas store called Bronner's Christmas Wonderland. Today is has grown to accommodate 1,500 cars and offers over 50,000 Christmas items. The half mile long Christmas Lane leads into the parking lot. Displays and Christmas lights are lit every night of the year. The store is open 361 days of a year and is visited by millions of people all over the world. Wally Bronner was a religious man and always kept Christ in Christmas. In 1992 Mr. Bronner built Bronner's Silent Night Memorial Chapel. The Silent Night Chapel is an exact replica of the original chapel in Obernderf, Austria. The Austrian Chapel is where, on Christmas Eve 1818, the song "Silent Night" was sung for the first time with guitar accompaniment. A young pastor, Joseph Mohr, asked Franz Gruber to compose a tune to go with the lyrics of a poem he had written two years earlier and "Silent Night" was born. Carl Maraucher heard about Silent Night while visiting Oberndorf. He brought the song back to spread around the world. The song landed on American shores in 1839. The carol has been translated into 300 languages. Mr. Bronner's chapel is lighted every night of the year along with the surrounding displays of the birth of Christ and enlarged song sheets in many languages. While visiting Frankenmuth in July we had an opportunity to participate in a local churches attempt to break the Guinness Book of World Records for most Christian carolers gathered in one location. The world record is 1,885 carolers. The attempt failed, but drew 1,400 carolers. The sights and sounds of 1,400 Christmas carolers marching and singing "Joy to the World," and "Silent Night" in front of 10 neighborhood homes was a most memorable experience. Frankenmuth is not just a Christmas town. Many parades and festivals make it a fun town. A paddle wheel riverboat that has spent years on the Mississippi and Arkansas Rivers has tours of the historic city on the Cass River. Carriage rides through downtown; Friday night street entertainment adds to the fun and excitement. Along the river, a Bavarian village offers 40 river place shops where one-of-a-kind shops and a cupcake store that appeared on TV's Food Network show is located on Main Street. Two of the Main St. restaurants claim to be the largest independently owned in America. One had 12 European themed dining rooms. The other seats 1,500 guests. Nearby places of interest include Sleeping Bear Sand Dunes Lakeshore Park; Mackinac Island (a trip back to yesterday). Sault Ste. Marie on the Canadian border. A big bonus for Northern Michigan is the enjoyable, low humidity (35%) low temperature, mid 80s and a constant cool breeze off of the Great Lakes. Going north into the Upper Peninsula, you pass by what seems like endless miles of cherry trees loaded with mouth-watering red cherries and many red raspberry fields.

Heading home through Wisconsin, I marveled at the picture perfect dairy farms, corn and soybean fields. My thoughts turned to how important the American farmer is to all of us, then my thoughts turned back to Frankenmuth and Wally Bronner's idea of Christmas all year long.

Flavian Halter

Poplar Bluff, Mo.