At the beginning of December, there is still room for eager anticipation of the winter holidays. There is time to finish that knitting project, shop for gifts, and get excited by glossy new recipes in cooking magazines. We can think back on what we so liked about this time of year when we were children. When I was growing up in Rochester, New York, I didn’t think much about Christmas on Islesford. As much as I missed the island, I was too immersed in the moment of my own holiday world to imagine a parallel universe in Maine.
In the week before Christmas my father would make his annual batch of fudge to hand out at work. While he was patiently stirring the sugary chocolate mass in our kitchen on Stonybrook Drive, Ann Fernald, my future mother-in-law, was mixing and rolling her annual batch of Christmas cinnamon buns in her busy kitchen on Islesford.
The next day my father would carefully transport the special packages of fudge while he rode with his fellow car pool buddies to work at Eastman Kodak. Ann enlisted the help of her children to deliver her glazed confections, on foot, to family and friends around the island. Finding our annual Rochester Christmas tree meant comparing prices in various parking lots as we drove out to the country for a day of skiing. The farther away we got from the city, the less expensive the trees.
Meanwhile, on Islesford, Warren Fernald would walk in the woods with his young boys to find the right tree to cut down. Sometimes the whole family went. He happily passed this job along to his three oldest sons when they were able to do it on their own. One year, upon finding a perfect tree that was way too tall, Mark Fernald shot the top off with his shotgun. “It took quite a few shots,” his brother Bruce told me. (Apparently their mother never knew this story until a few days ago.)
In my elementary school, while we decorated bulletin boards with construction paper cut outs of Christmas trees, dreidels, menorahs and snow men, the students at the Islesford School were getting ready to put on a Christmas play. The whole community got together at the school or the Neighborhood House for a holiday presentation which ended with a visit from Santa Claus. In those days, the Islesford Santa resembled a close relative to Lawrence Beal or Bob Palmer and he carried a large pack of white packages tied with red string, from the Seacoast Mission.
Shopping for gifts was something I did with my mother, after school, driving to one of the newer shopping plazas, or going downtown to Sibley’s, McCurdy’s or Foreman’s. On the island, Ann did much of her shopping through the Sears and Roebuck or Montgomery Ward catalogs. Though she and Warren did not drive or own a car until after their children were grown, there were times when they did take the family on a big-city shopping trip. They would hire a taxi or ask a friend to drive them to Bangor, where they would all spend the night at the Bangor House Hotel, and shop along Main Street, with an important stop at Freeze’s, the big department store in town.
My Christmases on Little Cranberry Island now outnumber those that I spent in Rochester.
A few things on the island have changed since my husband was growing up, but some have not. Most people on the island still go out in the woods to cut their own Christmas tree, and they almost never disclose where they found it.
There is still a big holiday gathering at the Neighborhood House with a presentation by the school children and a visit from Santa. For a number of years, it seemed Santa could have been related to Richard Hill, but lately his lineage is a surprise. Santa still brings a pack of presents wrapped in white paper and tied with red string from the Seacoast Mission. Just as they did 50 years ago, these packages contain a hand knit hat and pair of mittens, a book, a toy and some candy. They are a special piece of island holiday tradition.
When one exhausts all of the opportunities to shop closer to home, or from a catalogue, or on line, it still makes sense to spend a night off the island to have more time. The last ferry to the islands departs at 3:30 p.m. from Northeast Harbor, making for a short day of shopping if you drive an hour up to Bangor and back in the same day. Plus, staying off the island overnight gives you a chance to go out to dinner or see a movie.
The boat ride back to the island is one of my favorite things about the holidays on Islesford There is something magical about the happy tiredness of people coming home together in the dark. If we are met by spouses and children at the dock, packages are switched around before we land, to keep our purchases a secret. (Example: “Will you pretend this router is yours so Bruce doesn’t see me carrying it? Thanks. I’ll stop by and pick it up tomorrow.”)
I can’t recreate the carefree excitement I felt as a child at this time of year, but experiencing the Christmas season in a tiny island community provides a special alternative.