One shopkeeper says she senses more enthusiasm and gaiety among shoppers, and a local innkeeper appreciates the way people don’t seem to be rushing through the holidays.
They are teachers, plumbers, bankers, artists, fishermen, scallopers, shopkeepers, retirees and twenty-somethings. And while all of these roles are important, this weekend the key characteristic that binds this seemingly disparate group is that they sing.
It’s all green this weekend as the West Tisbury School hosts a fundraiser at the Middletown Nursery on State Road in West Tisbury.
Twenty years ago Norman Lobb bought too many seedlings and Danny Whiting’s family had a fallow farm field. The mistake turned out to be a business opportunity, and this winter they are selling Christmas trees at L&W Farm in West Tisbury.
A mechanical Santa wrote with a quill inside Moonstone Jewelers window, a mannequin fashioned a poinsettia dress in Alley Cat’s and a toy train zipped around photographs of snowy Vineyard days inside Island Art Gallery.
All were admired by the crowds assembled on Main street in Vineyard Haven on Tuesday, but Mix’s storefront — adorned with vintage toys stuffed in coffee cups — earned the best window award, given by four high school art students.
The wind blows hard as Mark Crossland and his crew assemble the last of 18 Christmas trees in Ocean Park. Mr. Crossland and Alisson Brasil tie a rope in a knot at the end of a pole, mount the pole in the ground, cable the rope down, and start wrapping Christmas lights around the six-foot tree.
The guys zip-tie the string to the ropes, and splice each light to prevent burn-out. It takes the crew about a week to fill Ocean Park with the trees, which for now look a bit naked in the sunlight.
But at night?
Editor's Note: Each year, editor Phyllis Meras creates a Christmas poem for the Vineyard.
