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.
For more than thirty years on the second weekend in December, Christmas in Edgartown has been celebrated in the classic style of a small New England town.
Away in a hotel, no crib for a bed, a giant six-foot stuffed Teddy Bear named Obie raised his sweet head. The stars in the Vineyard sky looked down where he yawned. The rest of his bear friends, Chappy, Edgar and Tisbeary, lay asleep until dawn.
On Wednesday, Dec. 3, Oak Bluffs officially begins the countdown to Christmas with the annual lighting of the tree at Post Office Square. The ceremony begins at 6:30 p.m.
In the annual Gazette Christmas poem Santa finds something in his sack for almost everyone.
A full moon hung in the December sky this week, casting long shards of light across the darkened landscape of oncoming winter. Hours before sunrise, pale moonbeams shone through the glass panes of a west-facing kitchen door, a silent accompaniment to the small task of grinding fresh coffee. It is called the cold moon this month, and fittingly the Island has been wrapped in bitter cold, its landscape covered with a paper-thin crust of snow.
When we embark on our Advent pilgrimage we are heading toward Christmas, a familiar destination. But the patterns and traditions of Christmases past may tug us too quickly to that day. The West Tisbury Congregational Church minister reflects.
