Christmas in Old Hallowell

The little town (actually, it’s officially a city, the smallest city in the state of Maine) of Hallowell works hard to come up with events – fesitivals, etc. – to attract visitors, and business. One of those events is Christmas in Old Hallowell Day, usually held on the second Saturday of December.

My favorite aspect of CIOH is the Mouse Hunt. Kids pick up a list of participating businesses (and one public library), then go to those places and try to find the mouse hidden somewhere in the window display. The library has no display windows, but until this year we had a large, old-fashioned display case in which we would arrange a Christmas-themed display, with the tiny grey mouse tucked away somewhere. This year, having moved the display case to the basement to make room for a third computer (technology displacing everything in its path), we had to make do with the top of the one of the lower bookcases. Anyway it’s fun setting up the display, figuring out a good place to hide the mouse, then watching as kids come trouping through throughout the day, Mouse Form in hand. They peer and peer – sometimes they require a helpful hint – then it’s Eureka – they write it down – and off they go to the next place.

The library had never participated in the Mouse Hunt before I came, but I thought it would be good for us to be a part of this community activity, thought it would be a good way to get kids, with accom-panying parents, into the library.

The other major event for us on CIOH is our Christmas Carol Sing-along. This also dates from my first year at the library. I just thought it would be a cool thing to do. Again, invite the community in. The first year there was a very small turnout, the second year quite an impressive turnout – there was even a representative of the press there, so we got written up in the newspaper – the third year it was back to being small (and the keyboard that was being used literally blew up at about the third song, so the rest of the singing was done a capella), this year it finally reached a decent size, by about the mid-way point. I always agonize over whether enough people will show up, just as I do for every program we put on. Obviously I could never have been a Broadway producer.

Last year we also put out styrofoam balls, glue and glitter, and encouraged people to make decorations for our (fake, but quite nice) tree. And quite a few folks did. This idea sprang from the fact that for years homemade ornaments were the norm in my own household. Starting with my husband’s and my first Christmas together, when we were living in Los Angeles and had a friend of mine and her partner up from Long Beach to help us make decorations and trim the tree. Every Christmas after that, if I had a tree, I would have who-ever walked trough my door during the holidays make at least one decoration, despite any protestations about having no artistic ability. Believe me, I have some very interesting ornaments.

But ornament making, especially with children involved, can be very messy, and a lot of work, and I simply did not feel like dealing with all that again. We had plenty of ornaments left over from last year anyway.

Something different we had this year was Hanukkah at the Hubbard, for kids, suggested by one of the mothers who used to bring her small children to our regular Children’s Hour on Wednesday mornings (until they graduated to pre-school). I was very relieved that Stacy essentially handled everything herself – two crafts, a story-with-song, refreshments – since I was pretty well worn out by the time 3:30 rolled around, which was when Hanukkah at the Hubbard began. This was not actually a library program; they were basically just using us as a venue. But I was very glad Stacy had suggested doing this, since there is a substantial if not large Jewish population in the area, who are “left out in the cold” in terms of any notice being taken of their special holiday.

The city has a parade – for every occasion the city has a parade – then there were fireworks. But this girl cleaned up her little library, went home, and made herself a bourbon and coke. Another Christmas in Old Hallowell gotten through.