In another attempt to help children understand about prayer, Mister Rogers once took his television neighbors along for a visit to the Sturgis Pretzel House, founded by Julius Sturgis, in Pennsylvania’s Lancaster County. The baker explained to Mister Rogers and the viewers (my then–three-year-old son and I were watching that day) how monks long ago gave pretzels as treats to children who had remembered their prayers. The dough was rolled into strips and crossed, to represent a child’s arms folded in prayer (pretzel means “little arms”), and the three holes in the pretzel represented the
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