On The Way To Cape May…My time of year

“Holiday Preview Weekend is especially nice because that Saturday, Nov. 19, we light our big Christmas tree here on the grounds. It’s a community affair, with free tours of the Physick House with its authentic Victorian decorations, refreshments, caroling, and more Christmas spirit than you can shake a stick at.”
+++
I may not be a really big fan of Halloween, but I am head over heels for Christmas. In my childhood years, Christmas was not the happiest of times. It usually meant unemployment for my father, a carpenter by trade in New England where outdoor work came to a halt in late November, resulting in lean times until spring came around. In spite of that, I never lost my optimism that Santa Claus was out there somewhere trying to find me.
In later years, raising my own family, I threw myself into Christmas wholeheartedly, maybe trying to make up for the first two decades of my life. As long as carols were playing in stores and Christmas displays were up, there was no such thing as too early. It became our family tradition to go in search of the perfect Christmas tree on the day after Thanksgiving. To this day, I begin watching every sappy Christmas movie on television, no matter that I’ve probably seen them before, and watch the Alistair Sim version of Scrooge every time it’s on.
So, I fit right into the holiday spirit here at MAC. We no sooner strip the Physick House and surrounding grounds of Halloween decorations than we start decking the halls for Christmas. We stretch the season to seven weeks, beginning the week before Thanksgiving on what we call Holiday Preview Weekend.
There’s something about Christmas in Cape May, in general, that just resonates with that elf inside of me. What better place for a Christmas fanatic than a Victorian village? It suits my holiday style, as well: You won’t find cutouts of Mickey in a Santa hat or blow-up snowmen gracing the lawns of a B&B along Columbia Avenue. Instead, these wonderful old properties are decked with miles of evergreen garland, twinkling white lights, and brilliant red bows. The town looks like it belongs in a snow globe, waiting for a giant hand to set the flakes whirling.
Holiday Preview Weekend is especially nice because that Saturday, Nov. 19, we light our big Christmas tree here on the grounds. It’s a community affair, with free tours of the Physick House with its authentic Victorian decorations, refreshments, caroling, and more Christmas spirit than you can shake a stick at. It’s a perfect time for families to get together and remember that Christmas has been around for a long, long time and it’s about more than waiting in long lines in a mall to buy the latest electronic gadget.
This year, along with Mary Stewart and Elan Zingman-Leith, I’m working on a Dickens Village beneath the boughs of a huge Christmas tree for the Carriage House Gallery exhibit. OK, so it’s not a whole, real tree (except for the cedar log I’m dragging out of the woods behind my house), but it will give the feeling of standing beneath a giant tree to marvel at the tiny village which was graciously donated to us several years ago by Ernie and Betsy Heegard, with around 150 major pieces…houses, churches, train stations and so much more. Sort of like a Cape May in miniature.
I hope you’ll bring your family that night and join us in welcoming the Christmas season. Start your holiday with that warm, fuzzy feeling you thought you had forgotten, greet friends and neighbors, and take home a healthy dose of Christmas spirit.
I’ll be the one wearing the Santa hat…with splinters in my fingers.
— Barraclough is director of marketing and communications at Mid-Atlantic Center for the Arts & Humanities (MAC)