A Conestoga Christmas With Pip the Mouse

Performances at 12 p.m., 1 p.m. and 2 p.m.

The Liberty Bell Museum is pleased to present “A Conestoga Christmas With Pip The Mouse”, a holiday celebration featuring Pip The Mouse in the classic holiday puppet show “The Mouse Before Christmas” and introducing the Museum’s newest treasure - a one-half scale Conestoga Wagon. 

Each year, this magical holiday programming attracts more than 4,000 visitors to the museum to see the beloved mouse and his Christmas Eve antics.  

 In colonial times, a Conestoga wagon, built in the Lancaster area, was the primary means of transporting freight and families.  The Liberty Bell traveled to Zion’s UCC Church in Allentown, home of the Liberty Bell Museum, in a Conestoga, and the addition of this new wagon is a wonderful way to weave the history of the Liberty Bell into the traditional holiday celebrations with Pip The Mouse. 

The handsome child-sized wagon was specially created for the Liberty Bell Museum by an Amish carpenter Isaac Lapp based on 18th century blueprints.  Kathryn Schaar Burke, illustrator of the Museum’s Pip the Mouse books, has painted the wagon in authentic colonial  reds and blues.

 “A Conestoga Christmas with Pip the Mouse” also features an array of special holiday history exhibits including:

 ·   Toys and Traditions from the Conestoga Era, from the collection of the Honorable David Bausch and other local collectors

 ·   “Pip’s Winter Wonderland” – classical mechanical toys first exhibited at Hess’s and new animations from the Creegan Company.

 ·     A Pennsylvania German Christmas Tree, circa 1850, decorated by Ann A. Wertman