Did you know…

…that the first Christmas cards produced in 1843 coined the greeting “Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year”?

…that the first Christmas tree in New England was a gift to the children of a German refugee, who recorded their response: “In a moment every voice was hushed, their faces were up turned to the blaze, all eyes wide open, all lips parted, all steps arrested”?

…that two towns in the United States are named Christmas, and four are named Bethlehem?

…that Captain John Smith, journaling his Christmas in Jamestown with Powhatan, wrote that the weather “caused us to keep Christmas among the savages, where we were never more merry, nor fed on more plenty…or never had better fires in England”?

These were some of the “Christmas Trivia” that spread the holiday spirit throughout the December, 1998 edition. December’s issues have always included holiday happenings, stories, services, histories, recipes, pictures and articles – on customs and recollections, places to visit, where to purchase the perfect gift or cut the perfect Christmas tree. We’ve always reserved the December cover for festive photographs and messages, starting in 1978 with the first, when an award winning photograph of the Linkilla’s horse drawn carriage in the snow accompanied an article entitled Christmas Past in which Pearl Scarpino interviewed some of our oldest residents — Helen Mathews, Vera Hoffman, Bertha Burnham, and Anna McDermott — who shared childhood memories of candlelit Christmas trees, and gifts of oranges, and caroling. Five years later, a subsequent article interviewed the “younger generation” – Helen Pearl, Phyllis Stone, Eunice Fuller and Mary Pearl – and presents were central to the recollections, and gatherings, like those at the Little River Grange.

The December 2011 front page proved that, not only has Christmas changed through the ages, it changes through our ages, when we asked residents of every decade, from 1914 to 2007, to submit letters to Santa Claus.  Our youngest contributors asked for “Smokey the Firetruck” and a “Snoopy Cone Maker”, the teenagers wanted  video games and a car, adults listed: rest, a housekeeper, health and happiness, respect for all species sharing the planet, for the people in town to get along with one another,  to smile a little more, and time; and our oldest resident, 97-year-old Vinnie Scarpino, wrote: “Dear Santa, Do you know how many years it’s been since I asked for something for Christmas? Surprise me!”

Past Christmas topics have encompassed customs from our heritages, like the meaning of candles in the window and the symbolism behind luminarias, and recipes – German lebkuchen, Scotch hash, Finnish pastries and the elements of the Polish Wigelia, Santa Claus collections and Christmas decorations, cultural and family folklore. Subjects have been as varied as the postmistress’s tale of a childhood adventure in Sleigh Ride, and John Woodworth’s journal entry of December 25, 1943 in An Overseas Christmas: Excerpts from a Wartime Diary. We’ve also paid tribute to special people who have personified hope, faith, charity and perpetual cheer.  Some front pages were simply pictorial: wreaths decorating several of our doors; an aerial view of our snow covered village; Lester Burnham’s horse-drawn sleigh with his granddaughters Ethel (Jaworski) and Marion (Halbach); a snowy watercolor of the Stone farm; and one year, the reopening of the General Store was announced with its pillars striped like candy canes, ropes of greenery across its entrance, the words “Happy New Year” suspended form the roof,  and “O Come All Ye Faithful” on its bulletin board.

Our December cover isn’t always dedicated to Christmas. In one of our first issues, Lenore Case wrote an article on Chanuka detailing the holiday’s rituals, and a few years later, her son wrote Chanuka through the Eyes of a Child and invited everyone in town to his family’s celebration. Recounting the months she spent in Cuba after fleeing Germany in 1938, Eva Loew described her most memorable Wooden Menorah which was “fashioned from a Cuban cigar box with wooden spools as candle holders and it glowed in the darkness of a refugee community.”  Mary Oliver detailed ancient structures “built to receive a shaft of sunlight into their central chambers at dawn on winter’s Solstice, and Norine Barrett described the history and the customs of Twelfth Night.

We’ve also reported on special holiday programs – community caroling and concerts, open house at the Historical Society and the Fletcher Memorial Library, plays our talented thespians have performed — Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, Capote’s A Christmas Story, and Its’ a Wonderful Life, Christmas services at our churches and tree-lighting at Town Hall.

We’ve printed a lot of articles on Christmas trees – our local tree farmers have provided us with information on how to properly grow, select, and cut them, and we’ve provided information on where to purchase them, for years at Pine Acres Tree Farm and Popover Hill, and more recently, on the Burdick’s farm. Marcia Kilpatrick’s column Green Thumbs advised us on how to keep them fresh, O Christmas Tree detailed the familial rituals they involve, humorist Angela Fichter entertained us in Rockefeller Christmas with the tale of a cat’s encounter with an extremely tall and freshly decorated one, and historical articles have traced their roots.

In 1999’s Christmas through the Ages, Lois Kelley traced the roots of Christmas itself, and many of its customs, the few that have fallen away, like yule logs and wassail, and the many which have withstood the test of time, among them eggnog, the exchange of cards, wreaths, caroling, Christmas cookies, stockings and Santa Claus, closing with the timeless message of a great literary tradition written 175 years ago, which we extend to you this and every year, “God Bless us everyone!”