Frohe Weihnachten und glückliches neues Jahr! Or in English: Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
In the mountains above the village of Vaduz in the Principality of Liechtenstein lies a small village. Many years ago a family lived on the edges of that village in their little farm house. There was a father and mother, and their twin children who were about ten years old at the time of this story. The boy was called Karl and the little girl was named Gretchen. The family raised goats as well as planting and harvesting potatoes and other vegetables in a plot near the house. The cheese they made from the goats milk was delicious and brought by many of their neighbors. They had just enough to make their lives comfortable with some left over to sell to buy a few extra things from the trader who occasionally found his way up to the little village.
This one year, in late summer, the father took sick and was unable to do his work. The mother and the twins tried to harvest the potatoes and the other vegetables, as well as herd the goats in the pastures, milk them and make the cheese. Thus it was with sadness that the family one night settled down to sleep. They were completely exhausted from their hard work, unable to finish it. They had milked the goats but were unable to make the cheese. The potatoes still lay in the ground and would soon rot if not harvested. The father lay sick on his bed unable to rise. They needed to make the cheese to sell to get money so that they could go down to the valley below and buy medicine. They all slept fitfully that night.
Little Karl was the first up that morning and he went out to let the goats out to pasture. Within minutes he came running back in calling for his mother. The goats! The goats were gone!
His mother and sister rushed outside and to their horror they found that Karl was right. The goats were not in the shed. They were gone. The mother looked frantically around for them. Then she spied them up on the pastures grazing merrily away. Somehow they had gotten out and found their way to the pasture. They gave thanks to the Virgin Mary and to God.
