The aim of this chapter is two-fold. First, it traces the changing nature and representations of Germanic heritage attributed to the place referred to, since European colonisation, as Lobethal. This history reveals the complex, changing and contested nature of local place identity, and demonstrates the ways in which international events are played out in different localities. Second, the chapter turns to a critical investigation of Lobethal’s contemporary construction as a Christmas wonderland as a specific form of rural idyll place making. The seventeen day Lights of Lobethal festival draws upon a carefully and deliberately constructed intersection between the village’s Germanic Lutheran heritage and romanticised notions of rural community (Winchester and Rofe 2005). Central to the Festival is the mobilisation of sentiments that equate rurality with tranquility, simplicity and ‘old fashioned’ values. In short, Lobethal’s Christmas wonderland is a social construction that strategically utilises discourses of the rural, the religious and the community. This critical examination of the changing representations of Lobethal’s identity and landscape provides the opportunity to unravel the complexity inherent in the landscape, the highly subjective nature of heritage place making and the commodification of the rural idyll discourse.