Turn Back Time

For some, traveling for the holidays is not so much a matter of where to but when. There’s something about Christmas that shares a symbiotic relationship with the past. Memory creates personal nostalgia. Time slows down. And technology takes a backseat to traditions.

In 2017, for the first time, Hermann Farm invited visitors to get lost in Christmas as it was celebrated in the nineteenth-century German town on the south bank of the Missouri River. And you can visit it again this year on December 14 and 15.

The 160-acre working farm is an open-air museum that captures the spirit of 1850s Hermann when German immigrants had only just begun to settle the area of the Missouri River valley that reminded them so much of their home along the Rhine. The farm was originally the home of George Husmann, who came to the area in 1838 to live on land his father had purchased while still in Germany.

Deck the Halls

Visitors to Hermann Farm can take part in the special Christkindl Markt and will be joined by author and historian Dorris Keeven-Frank who will speak about German traditions.

The holiday spirit spills across the entire acreage. Herman Farm’s resident shire horses are wearing brightly polished harness bells. A roaring bonfire warms guests behind the restored 1838 mercantile and visitors center.

Schuetzenhalle is decorated with scherenschnitte and springerle, and every building takes on a Christmas theme, from the trading post with antlers and turkey feather décor to Master Distiller’s log homestead with corn husk dolls and many natural decorations. Father Christmas will be at the farm, too.

For more information and updates, go to Facebook: Hermann Farm or call 573-486-3276.