Holiday Festival Finds

Tradition And History In Newtown

By Kendra Bobowick

A fleeting snow fell Sunday, December 2, adding its powdered touch of holiday decoration to the Newtown Youth & Family Services, Inc’s (NYFS) 22nd Annual Holiday Festival. Residents left tracks that soon melted in a light drizzle as they moved from one event to another, from gingerbread houses and classic ballet performances of Nutcracker Suite by the Malenkee Ballet Repertoire Company, the official ballet company of Newtown Centre of Classical Ballet, to formal tea services and a walking tour through open houses dressed with holiday wreaths, bows, music, and spirit.

Concluding a weekend filled with seasonal events that began with caroling and cider accompanying the traditional tree lighting at Ram Pasture and another tree lighting in Sandy Hook, residents found an abundance of holiday spirit on Sunday during the annual holiday festival.

Personal Christmas Stories

For the first time gingerbread houses previously found in fairy tales or cookbooks took their place in the annual holiday festival with the new gingerbread house contest. Displayed on tables in the town hall gymnasium were handmade houses of creative design, modeled after buildings in town once creators learned that the theme of the contest was “Images of Newtown.”

Gum drops, sugared frosting, glistening rainbow-colored hard candy, and, of course, the gingerbread, all blended to form the houses. Newtown Youth & Family Services Inc Program Coordinator Laura Miller noted the change in the festival.

“This is our first year,” said Ms Miller, who chaired the new festival offering. Why the new event? “It’s for fun. It’s a family activity that can get people involved in the holiday season.”

Jolly St Nicholas spent a few minutes listening to children’s hopeful voices reminding him of their Christmas lists.

A couple floors above the contest was a Victorian Tea in the formal Alexandria Room, offering mulled cider, tea, scones, breads, and accompanied by music from Lindsey Jones and Tanya Merrill, both members of Norwalk Youth Symphony Orchestra. Clearly displayed in the center of each table were teapots filled with flower arrangements created by the Town and Country Garden Club of Newtown. Each teapot centerpiece was for sale.

For two women the teapots hold sentimental value.

Ginger Humeston of NYFS explained that two cousins traditionally meet and attend the tea. “One buys a pot for the other and it’s a memory for the year. They collect them,” she said.

Across the street at the Matthew Curtiss House, the Newtown Historical Society docents welcomed residents in to view a Christmas past. In the parlor was a tree hung with cranberries and dried apples. Sugar cookies were piled on a plate in the kitchen where guests could breath in the smoky atmosphere that would have greeted homeowners in the years shortly after 1750, when home heating relied on the huge central fireplace, also used for cooking.

Leaving Main Street and traveling down Church Hill Road brought festivalgoers to several homes also on the walking tour. The antique dwellings, built in the 1700s and mid-1800s, were at 7 and 15 Washington Avenue. Norwalk Youth Symphony Orchestra players, also Newtown High School Orchestra players, were also providing music for attendees. Sarah Grose on the clarinet and Emily Loose playing viola knitted their wind and string instruments’ sounds together into holiday tunes.