Christkindl in Eastern Iowa

Children placing boots by the door on Christmas Eve

Christkindl came to eastern Iowa the way December storms did—quietly at first, then all at once. By the 1860s, the river towns of Davenport, Guttenberg, Elkader, and the communal streets of Amana carried the sound of German carols through the cold air, and it was hard to tell where old-world memory ended and new-world habit began.

The newspapers rarely explained the holiday. They assumed everyone already knew. When they mentioned it, they spoke in plain sentences. A Davenport editor said , “The German families prepare for Christkindl as their parents did before them.”

 

Children placed boots outside their doors on Christmas Eve. Big boots, if they had them. Little ones polished until they reflected lamplight. The Christkindl—not Santa, not St. Nicholas, but something more gentle—was said to slip inside the houses after the family had gone to bed. “The Christ-child brings the gifts,” the Iowa Reform explained, “and no child should seek to spy upon its coming.” Parents repeated the rule with the solemnity of a town ordinance.