2025 PA Dutch Calendar

The 2025 Pennsylvania Dutch Calendar features the folklife paintings of Gladys M. Lutz (1909-2007). Nicknamed the “Grandma Moses of the Lehigh Valley,” her folk art paintings are a testament to the persistence of early farm life in the memories of the PA Dutch people and an opportunity to explore the folk culture of the past in vibrant colors. As a bilingual, 13-month calendar, all of the text is in Pennsylvania Dutch and English for ease of use in families that wish to explore their Pennsylvania heritage.

To order the calendar online, visit: https://www.masthof.com or download a printable order form.

Born at the turn of the century, Gladys Lutz began her life in a community where agriculture was still primarily performed with draft animals, domestic activities were determined by the ruling day of the week, and the Pennsylvania Dutch language echoed through the hills of the Dutch Country. Folklife experiences of this kind were not yet memories—they were facts of life. At the same time, Gladys witnessed some of the most rapid cultural change of any period in history, and experience first-hand the rising tides of modernity in rural America.

As a life-long educator, Gladys was distinctly aware of the need to maintain a cultural identity in the midst of such changes. Throughout her 36 years of teaching elementary school in Lehigh County, she was ever mindful of her role in imparting some measure of this appreciation of culture to her students—always looking to the past as a way to inform the present. It was in this manner that Gladys’ passion for education was intimately connected with her motivation to capture vignettes of rural Pennsylvania living in the form of folk art illustrations—earning her the nickname “The Grandma Moses of the Lehigh Valley.” Although her career as an artist only began following retirement from teaching, Gladys never rested for a moment from her desire to preserve and promote the local culture.

Explore more of Gladys Lutz’s colorful paintings in Folk Art Memories: The Folklife Illustrations of Gladys M. Lutz, Volume III of the Annual Publication Series of the Pennsylvania German Cultural Heritage Center, available at www.masthof.com, or download a printable order form.

The Pennsylvania Dutch language, Pennsylvaanisch Deitsch, is the native speech of thousands of inhabitants of Pennsylvania and twenty-nine other U.S. states, as well as Ontario. In the 18th century, some 81,000 immigrants from German-speaking regions, including southwestern Germany, Alsace, and Switzerland came to Pennsylvania, and settled in rural southeastern Pennsylvania. By 1800, the descendants of these immigrants spoke Pennsylvania Dutch, which still preserves a strongly southwestern (specifically, Palatine) German character, even after 300 years in North America.

The Pennsylvania Dutch language is a cultural treasure. Within its idioms, expressions and figures of speech, a vast repository of cultural memory spanning many generations is still accessible today. This calendar, with its annual observations of seasons, secular holidays, and religious feast-days, is an excellent way to relate to the culture of the region, both past and present. Throughout the history of Pennsylvania Dutch, the language was spoken by two main groups of people, the Church People, composed of mostly Lutheran and Reformed churches, and the Plain people, members of conservative Anabaptist and Pietist sects. Although everyday use of Pennsylvania Dutch has declined among the descendants of the Church People, the number of Amish and Old Order Mennonite speakers of the language is doubling every twenty years. Today there is a resurgence in interest in traditional culture of the Pennsylvania Dutch, and many communities, organizations, and institutions have taken an interest in the preservation and continuation of the language.