We’ve featured the Moravian Star more than once in the course of the calendar. I find them irresistible.
Last year I reported the excitement of buying a new star to replace the tattered one I’d had since the 1980s. The prospect of getting a new one was not what thrilled me, particularly given my almost crippling sentimentality towards old, wired-together objects that have served me faithfully. Rather, it was the fact that we were able to bundle up the grandkids (it was cold) and go buy one in a spot where the Moravian Star was part of living history: Old Salem.
Old Salem is one of five 18th-century Moravian settlements incorporated within today’s city of Winston-Salem. Today it exists primarily as one long street filled with historic buildings. In the middle lie Salem College and Salem Academy, both established in 1772 and the oldest educational institutions for women in the United States.
But other Moravian settlements here predate Old Salem, including Bethania (c. 1750), less than two miles from our house, and Bethabara (1753). Both have historical buildings you can visit and fascinating histories. Both, as you might guess, abound in Moravian stars during the season of Advent. Best of all, the majority of those stars (through the miracle of electricity that would have flabbergasted the original settlers) stay lit up even during daytime, creating an alley of stars as one passes through!
The Moravian Star provides a direct link of our American culture back to the eighteenth century and a specific place in today’s Germany called Herrnhut (also Herrenhut). Here Czech Protestants were invited to resettle in 1722 in order to escape persecution in Bohemia and Moravia. To this day, Germans call the star after that settlement’s name (Herrnhuter Stern) and hang them everywhere once Advent begins.
From Herrnhut, Moravians went literally out into the world (including the Caribbean!). They settled in Pennsylvania, and then made their way down to the Western side of today’s North Carolina where a purchase of land for their use in Wachovia had been accomplished.
Yet the star dates from after this initial period of emigration. It began not as an ornament or religious symbol, but rather as an exercise in geometry. A Moravian schoolmaster in the 1830s devised it as a cleverly worked-out exercise to teach his boys about 3-dimensional geometry. Those little boys would be astonished to see how their school-room project has spread across the world.
Here in Old Salem, Moravian Stars are available in glass, cut tin, acrylic, paper, and plastic. They are stamped on the boxes of delicious wafer-thin Moravian sugar cookies, imprinted on countless official and commercial brochures, and turned into jewelry, commemorative discs, and other items. In every usage I see, though, they retain their beauty and their dignity. No matter how often I gaze at the Moravian Star, I am transfixed. That insightful schoolmaster understood how the multiplicity of points engages the eye, the mind, and the imagination.
If you are able to come to Old Salem at Advent, you can partake of several lovely experiences beyond finding the ideal Moravian star for your family. The historic Winkler Bakery is scented with spices and the aroma of a wood-fired stove where the traditional Moravian sugar cookies are baked year round. But at this season of the year, the atmosphere feels even more festive.
You also can find instructions for making these stars at home, much as those schoolboys did long ago. Or you can purchase them many places, including on websites linked to Old Salem. But no matter how you encounter them, if just admiringly while passing decorated houses this Christmas, think of their long, quiet trail from a faraway land into the hearts and homes of so many people as we continue our celebration of Advent.