Kempf House Museum holds annual German Family Christmas

The Sugar Plum Fairy takes Lea Blander for a spin at the 2008 Children's Holiday Party at the Kempf House Museum.

Courtesy, Kempf House Museum

The German Family Christmas exhibit will run the next two weekends. For the occasion, German language students from Huron High School, under the aegis of German teacher Andrew Smith, helped museum volunteers decorate.

Carol Mull, a curations consultant for the museum, said longtime board member Duffy Liddicoat reached out to Smith and other local German teachers as an effort to bring more youth into the museum's doors and introduce German language learners to the culture.

Lauren Lincoln, a senior in Smith's German class, came to decorate. She helped make cloved-oranges, an altmodisch German air freshener before the days of aerosol.

"My family background is German," Lincoln said. "But over time we've lost some of the language and the culture. I'm trying to get that back."

The German Family Christmas will run on Saturdays and Sundays the next two weekends, from 1 to 4 p.m. Groups can come and go as they choose, and Kempf House volunteers will be on hand to explain some of the traditions on display.

Huron high school German teacher Andrew Smith shows senior Lauren Lincoln (left) and sophomore Kara Jahnke make cloved oranges at Ann Arbor's Kempf House Museum.

James Dickson | AnnArbor.com

Not only is Christmastime programming a long-standing tradition at the Kempf House Museum, it's also done in traditional fashion. Guests will get to sample German Christmas cookies, and also make German Christmas stars.

One of the historical flourishes in the holiday exhibit is the feather tree on the museum's second floor. When the German government addressed deforestation by prohibiting citizens from chopping down Christmas trees, Germans resorted to constructing feather Christmas trees to keep some semblance of that tradition alive.

Kempf museum president Kjirsten Blander, who recently told AnnArbor.com she'd like the museum to attract a younger audience in the new year, sees the German Family Christmas open houses as a multigenerational learning tool - a way for adults and their children to connect while the fine points of German culture and Ann Arbor's strong German heritage.

German Family Christmas events are free of charge, but the city-owned museum will take donations.

WHEN AND WHERE

Kempf House Museum
312 S. Division
Ann Arbor, MI 48104
734-274-0528

German Family Christmas
1 p.m. to 4 p.m.
Sat. Dec. 5
Sun. Dec. 6
Sat. Dec. 12
Sun. Dec. 13

James David Dickson can be reached at JamesDickson@AnnArbor.com.