Celebrating Traditional Christmas with Germany's Princess Gloria — PART 1
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Summary
Join us for a beautiful and traditional Christmas in Germany, where Princess Gloria leads us through the most glorious Christmas market in all of Germany! We are in the middle of the Frontenau Schloss, the Fronternes Schloss in Regensburg, and our host is Princess Gloria. We wanted to bring you, all of our great supporters, listeners and viewers of Life Site News, a glimpse of a traditional beautiful Christmas. We know we ve been deprived of that at the White House over the last year, and unfortunately, also at the Vatican for the last couple of years. So we wanted to give you a beautiful Catholic holy, real Christmas celebration, no better place to do it than here in Germany with Princess Gloria!
Transcript
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Hello and welcome to Regensburg in Germany, where we are in the middle of the
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Fronturne Taxes Schloss, the Fronturne Taxes Castle, and our host is Princess
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Gloria. We wanted to bring you, all of our great supporters, our readers and
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viewers of LifeSite News, a glimpse of a traditional beautiful Christmas. We know
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we've been deprived of that at the White House over the last year and
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unfortunately also at the Vatican for the last couple years, actually the last
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number of years. So we wanted to give you a beautiful Catholic holy real Christmas
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celebration. No better place to do it than here in Germany with Princess Gloria.
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She's going to take us through a number of things. First of all the beautiful
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Christmas market that they have right here in the castle. These walls of the
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castle surround the most glorious Christmas market in all of Germany. Please
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join us for a beautiful and traditional Christmas in Germany.
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So you have the Christmas tree on. So of course, most of the things are culinary. You can
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eat the Bavarian specialities, but you can also buy local handicrafts. You see here you
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have the tradition. This is food that sweets that are always good. You also get in
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Octoberfest, but here all the nuts is more for Advent. Yes, this is a typical time where
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because it's cold. You need a lot of calories. Then you eat the nuts, which are good for
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your nerves. Now here you have the traditional way that for the swine. This is pork. Very nice
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pork. And of course, in these temperatures you love to eat this kind of food. Very, very
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traditional for Bavarian. And look, this beautiful little Christmas tree. Isn't it wonderful? She
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designs it herself. This is fantastic. This is a stand to warm up. This is a high percentage
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of course. A liquor. We drink for the LiveSide News, for the international visitors or the international
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viewers of LiveSide News. We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. We have to drink
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this because it's so cold now. Merry Christmas. What do you think, Johnny? Beautiful. It's very,
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very strong, but very good. Very, very good. It's got a, it's got a taste. It's very, very
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strong, but it's got a beautiful taste underneath that. Beautiful. And of course the sausages.
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That's very Bavaria. Look at the sausages. Oh, wow. This is the Regensburgs facility.
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It's got a good nap. And it's also very, very tasty, very strong. Justin? How much are
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Let me remind you, the only way we can do what we're doing right now is with your support.
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And as you know, we're in the last couple of days before the end of our Christmas fundraiser,
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so we'd love it if you could support what we're doing to bring you tradition and truth
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from around the world. Let's begin as you always do with the sign of the cross. In the name of the
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Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. So I would love for you to tell us about
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Christmas in Germany. Yeah. I would love to. So Christmas has a great tradition and it starts
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with the Advent and we sit around the Advent and we basically sing Christmas carols like
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we will do this afternoon. And the Christmas carols are nothing else but prayers sung.
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And so through the Advent you have special foods. And we have the Lebkuchen, we have Spekulatius,
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we have a lot of sweets that are only eaten during Advent. You will not eat them in January.
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You only eat them in Advent and they have special spices and they are totally connotated with Advent and Christmas.
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And so everything that you eat and smell is something that remains in your tradition.
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So in the Advent you also have special masses where you only have candlelight.
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We call them the Rorate masses, candlelight mass, which is also beautiful.
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This is all to prepare for the arrival of Christ. And then of course, finally, on 24, which is Christmas night,
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we celebrate Christmas night. The Anglo-Saxon world celebrates Christmas morning.
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But here it is Christmas night and the children believe that it's baby Jesus who brings them the presents.
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Father Christmas is a Protestant Anglo-Saxon invention.
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In the Catholic world, in Germany, it's Jesus, baby Jesus and the angels.
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I think the only Christmas tradition that took on in the whole world was in the German-speaking,
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And so what happens is on Christmas Eve, we all get dressed up very elegantly.
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The ladies put on either a long dress or a cocktail dress.
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And we gather at 5 o'clock when it's dark outside, and we have the candles lit, and we sing our Christmas carols.
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And then one of us, or from the employees maybe if there is somebody from the employees in the house,
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otherwise one of us will leave the room silently and will ring a bell.
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And then the children will say, we heard the bell, we heard the bell.
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And, oh, that means that baby Jesus has just left, and baby Jesus is telling us we can come.
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And then we go singing in a procession to the room, which is decorated as a Christmas room.
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The Christmas tree is a pine tree, and it will be decorated with glass balls and candles.
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And when you can stay with the tree, you can use some real candles for the smell.
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Otherwise, better use the electrical, because we already had an incident in the family.
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Yes, because when it lit fire, it's very quick.
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So we enter in the room, and there is a lit Christmas tree.
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Everything else is dark, and we will have the Nativity scene.
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And we will kneel down in front of the Nativity scene, and we will read the Gospel of Lucas.
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In these days, Emperor Augustus called everybody to be counted.
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And we read this, and then after it's finished, one of us reads it.
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And then we sing Stille Nacht, maybe one Strophe.
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And then when that's done, we open a champagne, and we wish each other Merry Christmas, and we
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And that can take some time, because if there's 10 people in the room, it takes some time.
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And then after dinner, we will wait until 11 o'clock.
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And then after church, we have to stay up all night and enjoy the festivity.
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And then the next day on the 25th, we go to church again, because it's Christmas Day.
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Everybody gets dressed up, and we will gather not in the kitchen, but in the drawing room
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It will be beautifully decorated, and we will still enjoy our presents.
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And maybe something hasn't been opened last night, and we will open presents.
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And we basically sit together and enjoy the Christmas cakes, the different Christmas sweets, and be together.
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And in Germany, do you still have the tradition where Christmas sort of starts on the night of the 24th?
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Because in the old rite, it used to go to February 2nd.
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I know that the Vatican II stops, I think, on January 10th or something.
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So, my understanding is that the tradition of the Christmas tree, which really everybody has,
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The Christmas tree is basically from its original, it is a pagan thing.
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It's a pagan tradition that found its way into the Christian tradition.
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But that happened very often because the Christians of the old times who were missionaries were clever.
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Because why take away from the pagans the things they really love?
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It's a much smoother way to missionary than to say that your stuff is all bad and it has to be abolished.
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All the rites that are not satanic in any way can be incorporated in the Christian tradition.
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And that's why the tree has now a very fixed and very important role because also very decorative.
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A tree, a green, a tree that is green all year round and that you can decorate looks wonderful in the room.
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Tell us if you know the story of St. Boniface and the Donar Oak.
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Well, apparently, the Germanic people were not old.
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They had several gods, which is very confusing, of course.
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The oak tree was worshipped and Mother Earth and, I don't know, many, many gods.
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And that was a problem for the pagans because the pagans, if they served one god, another god was aggressive and jealous.
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So, people were kept in fear because you could do one good, you did the other one something bad.
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So, when Christianity came, in a sense, it was a great relief to the people that they learned that their god loves the human being and wants you to worship one god and not 50 and certainly not a tree.
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And when St. Boniface came and he knocked down the tree and wanted to build a church or an altar instead, of course, the pagans got angry and eventually he was killed.
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But his missionary work and his legacy fell on very fertile ground because he started the Christianism in Germany.
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We would still be heathens today if we didn't have St. Boniface.
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And so, the tradition of the nativity scene is a very great tradition here in Germany.
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In Rome, we always used to go and see the nativity scene.
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And then with Pope Francis, we had a couple of very strange ones.
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First, it was a scandalous one around homosexuality.
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But then the next year, we had the Martian one.
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But Germany has a lot of tradition in both the carvings that are just so beautiful.
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I think probably more beautiful than anywhere else in the world.
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But we have to say also Italy, especially Naples.
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I have a small collection of nativity scenes which I would love you to look at.
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I hope you will take a picture of it also because we decorated the altar with it.
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Yes, Bavaria, especially Bavaria, has an old tradition of nativity scenes.
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And it's wonderful because it shows the children what Christianity is all about.
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Because Christ was born and with the message of the God, the Savior of the world was born.
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Of course, the devil got into action and wanted to kill him immediately.
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When we celebrate just a day or two before, on the 28th, we celebrate the children that were killed by Herodes.
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Because Herodes wanted no other king next to him than himself and he was fearing.
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That's nothing different than killing children altogether.
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And therefore, the Christian message is so strong and the Christian iconography and the pictures
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It's very important to teach the children what the religion is all about.
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There's great preparation in terms of what you do to set up the creche.
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It's a tradition that is not in America, some people do it, but it's not nearly as widespread and as carefully done with such, you know, concern and beauty as it is here.
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What do you think has held up that tradition here?
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Well, because, of course, Europe is a thousand year old Christianity.
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And, of course, the traditions are given, passed on generation by generation.
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For example, in our country, for the Catholics, it's not seen well if you put up the Christmas tree too early.
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The Christmas tree has to be up on 24th before you only have the advance cards.
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So everything follows a protocol and has its time and it makes it more fun because there's more variety in what's happening during these four weeks.
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And the creche, as you say, or the nativity scene, for example, we do not put the three kings until the three kings day.
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If you have like the one that I have on the other, it's complete with merchants and the city life and this whole Neapolitan scenery.
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But still, the musicians and then closer to the three kings.
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They move further on in the dramaturgy of the setting.
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Now, it's really funny because I think a lot of people regard a lot of the biblical stories as merely fables.
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Yet, in more ancient countries, especially like Germany, there's a real, not only tradition, but history to it.
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In fact, the city of Köln or Cologne, as they call it in America, is actually Dreikönigstadt, the city of the three kings.
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Because they have this amazing relic of the three kings.
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It's in a beautiful, large sort of cathedral coffin.
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And it is since, I think, 800 years it is there.
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And so, that's why it's called the city and a great veneration for the three kings.
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Because, again, the three kings show the international aspect and the non-racist aspect of Christianity.
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It's the only religion that is totally not racist because everybody who joins the faith becomes brother and sister.
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And how can you be racist with your brother and sister?
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And you see with these three foreigners that look so totally different than the population in Israel,
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it's also a sign that the Christian message has spread all over the world.
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And these very high and mighty persons have said, oh, we have to go and worship.
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And they go for this very, very long trip to find baby Jesus in the cradle.
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Because I am surprised every day when I read in my saint book, The Saint of the Day.
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And I must say, I encounter so many fabulous saints.
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And I like the saints because I like the history of the early Middle Ages.
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And because they had it so tough in those days because it was ice cold in the castles.
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And for example, I like very much Saint Elizabeth.
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Saint Elizabeth was a daughter of a king and she got sent to Bavaria to be a queen here.
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And her husband was not very nice to her, but still she was trying to do her very best.
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And then I like very much also Saint Teresa from Lisieux.
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I like also very much Saint Teresa Avila's very, very good friend Saint John.
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And, of course, I love Saint Bernadette because she helps the sick.
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And I like, of course, Saint Anthony because he's so helpful.
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And I said to Saint Anthony, Saint Anthony, I don't know what I did wrong.
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Because that's what you cannot do if you promise him.
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If you promise Saint Anthony, you are giving to the poor.
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But if you don't give what you promised, you are going to lose something else.
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And he is going to make it very difficult for you.
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I hope you have enjoyed our traditional Christmas here in Regensburg, Germany.
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We are standing right now on an 11th century stone bridge.
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This is a traditional glorious Christmas, which we've been so happy to bring to you.
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In fact, if you tune in tomorrow, we're going to be talking with Princess Gloria again about
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And on the 26th, we'll be back again with another piece with Princess Gloria.
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And we'll be looking at her feeding the poor, hundreds of poor, every day for the last
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more than 100 years here in Germany at the Thunentaxes Castle.
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From Regensburg, from Jim Hale behind the camera, and myself, John Henry Weston, we wish you a happy