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Sharing Joy Through Christmas and Holiday Fairs

In the Connecticut River valley, the Winthrop Baptist Church is known far and wide for its varied and generous array of Christmas and holiday crafts and goodies sold at its annual Holly Day Faire.

And, in the Winthrop Baptist Church, Valerie Winschel is known for making the vast majority of crafts that will be sold that day.

For most of the year, with just a bit of time off right after the fair and a little bit more in the summer, Winschel forages and finds, either herself or through the generosity of others, the materials that become holiday treasures.

Leftover canning jar lids. Light bulbs. Rags. Clothes pins. Crab shells from the beach. Pine cones. Wine corks. She once pulled her family’s RV over by the side of the road while traveling on vacation through Pennsylvania to collect from a roadside meadow something called teasel, a weed with a spiky, spiny flower head ideal for transformation into Christmas critters of all sorts.

The night before the holiday fair, she’ll pull up to the white clapboard church, which has roots in the Deep River community that go as far back as 1729. Her car will be packed with boxes and boxes and boxes. There will be other volunteers there, who have already set up the inside of the church and they will help her unload those boxes onto the tables inside the church hall.

This year, she has something new to put on the table. That’s because earlier this year, one of the women in charge of the summer tag sale at Winthrop Baptist Church spotted something she thought Winschel might like.

It was a table full of used saws. Used saws?

“When I came to the tag sale, she asked me if I wanted to do anything with them. I said, ‘Oh yeah, that’s a good idea.’ I sanded them down. Then I looked on Pinterest for patterns. And I have one that’s people sledding. And a gingerbread man. And two snowmen.”

The four Christmas saw ornaments will take their place on the craft table next to all the rest of the ornaments.

Many, Many Volunteers

The Christmas and holiday fair season is well underway. While they have been taking place since early November hosted by churches, parish centers, American Legion Women’s Auxiliary and American Legion Posts, senior centers, historical societies, and other groups, the weekend of Saturday, Dec. 1 and Sunday, Dec. 2 is like the Lollapalooza of holiday fairs. There will be more than a dozen in the Connecticut River valley and on the Connecticut shoreline on that weekend alone, in Chester, Deep River, North Madison, and Madison. There will be two in Killingworth, two in Clinton, and four in Branford. In addition, there will be one in North Haven this coming weekend on Saturday, Nov. 24.

The notices of the fairs are tucked away in the calendar section of the local newspaper, or sometimes people learn about them from the many, many volunteers who help make them happen, virtual armies of people who share their organizational skills, cooking expertise, and crafting with their community.

Anyone who’s been to a holiday fair knows how special they can be and those who haven’t, well, this year should be the year they check one out. There will be canned goods, cookies, homemade breads, crafts, ornaments, wreaths and table toppers, and those little kitchen towels with the buttons to hang in the kitchen. At many of these events, there also will be people working away in the kitchen to provide breakfast or lunch or both to the fair’s visitors.

These volunteers are just like the rest of us, most of them having experienced their share of troubles and life’s injustices. For some of them, like Winschel, participating in these events reminds them that, while happiness can be fleeting, that doing good works creates joy in their lives.

Winschel counts herself among those who give back to her community in part because her community was there for her during a dark time in her life, involving a family member who had a motorcycle accident and later died.

“I was fairly new to the church. And they helped me a lot at that church,” she says. “I figured when it came to giving back, I could do that crafting.”

Worthy Causes

Mark Silk, a professor of religion in public life at Trinity College, where he directs the Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life, says that Christmas fairs in New England likely go back to the 19th century with the introduction of other Christmas traditions like Christmas trees, yule logs, and Santa Claus.

“A lot of the stuff we associate with Christmas today comes from Germany and the Netherlands,” he says. “Some of it is fairly pagan. What is interesting is that, at least in some parts of Massachusetts and Connecticut, in the 1830s, the antislavery movement seized on Christmas fairs and Christmas bazaars as part of the abolitionist movement. So, for some of these churches, it was a way of raising money for abolitionism.”

He says the goal of raising money for worthy causes through these fairs continues in many churches and other organizations today.

“In New England, at least, that tradition goes back almost 200 years,” he says. “Over time they came to be known for raising money for a worthy church activity or ministry of some sort. Whether it’s a church fair, or bingo, or a tag sale or whatever it is, this is how these institutions raise money to do what they do.”

Chris Gagne, a volunteer who organizes the North Haven Congregational Church Holiday Fair on Nov. 24, agrees that doing good works is an important outcome of the fair. The North Haven Holiday Fair beneficiary is The Animal Haven in North Haven, a shelter for homeless and abandoned cats and dogs.

“It’s one of our bigger fundraisers and we’ve been doing it for many, many years. The shelter is private, so much of our funding comes from fundraisers and all of the work involved in planning, organizing, and running a fundraiser comes from the work done by many dedicated volunteers,” she says. “There are no costs to the shelter to run this event. Volunteers donate items to sell and work the event or bake goodies for the bake sale. These events would not happen without the volunteers. We also know the volunteers truly enjoy working at the event and that it’s a fun and satisfying thing to do.”

Lynn Tendler, a volunteer helping to run the Clinton American Legion Women’s Auxiliary Holiday Fair, which was earlier this month, agrees.

“The goal of this event is to raise money for the auxiliary to help local veterans and support legion members as well as other local groups that have similar goals. We have multiple fundraisers each year and the craft/bake/tag sale is the largest event. It is a big undertaking and would not be so successful without the enormous efforts of the women who volunteer their time and goods. Barb Roberts and her sisters Linda Thompson and Betty Jackson run the bake sale. Despite having busy lives, they take the time each year not only to run the sale, but they create fabulous pies, cakes, and other assorted goodies. It takes months of planning. They donate all the products they make, not just their time.”

A Fourth-Generation Endeavor

Winschel’s Aunt Amy was a long-time volunteer for the Winthrop church fair and got Winschel involved. Now Winschel has looped in her daughter, and her granddaughter, making the craft fair a fourth-generation endeavor for the family. Winschel’s husband helps as well.

She started with old fashioned sugar ornaments and added other crafts as she saw them, often while on vacation.

“I might find a hand towel and I would say, ‘I can do this,’” she says. “When my children were small and we took an RV trip and headed down south, I saw these teasel mice in a display. And another time we were in Pennsylvania and I saw teasel on the side of the road. It’s a weed thing, and I started picking it and bringing it home and making mice of it, Christmas mice. And then I add music instruments or a candy cane or something like that,” she says.

How many crafts and ornaments does she make each year. She’s not exactly sure.

“Dozens,” she says. “I do dozens.”

She starts to pull out the boxes.

“Dish cloths for washing dishes. Let’s see what else is in this box,” she says, rummaging. “I have to price all of this stuff. My sister made cardinals out of plastic and cross stitch. Angels and owls out of pine cones. Light bulbs. We do Santa Claus on them. And snowmen. Leftover canning jar lids. Some pigs and snowmen on those. And let’s see what else I got. Horses out of corks. I did skates out of plates. And Christmas tree bulbs. Those are owls and penguins.”

She pulls out some more boxes.

Crab shells that are now cats and snowmen and Santa Clauses.

Clothes pins that are elves and soldiers and skaters and carolers.

“I have some snowmen made out of muslin. And a dozen quilted balls. And, I think, around a dozen of trees quilted.

“That’s about it.

“Oh, and the saws.”

Anything else?

“Oh, I made stockings. I think I got like four to six stockings I made. And my younger sister Olivia she donated these pinwheel kind of things.

“And my husband made stars of wood, wood slats and in the center we put greens and pine cones and berries, like a centerpiece or you can hang them on doors. We got about 35 to 40 stars.”

Is that it?

“And I make those hanging towels every year. And the teasel mice. And my granddaughter Melanie who goes to UConn and is majoring in art will make ceramics.”

She also makes sugar cookies.

“And I decorate them. I cut down a bit on that from last year. But I still have a lot of cookies. I do like sweetbreads and stuff like that. Sometimes we’ll do popcorn. Snowman soup. Gingerbread men individually wrapped.”

How many?

“Oh, I don’t know. Dozens and dozens.”

“And we do like making jams and jellies. This year I made peach, raspberry, grape, elderberry.

“And zucchini relish.”

It is in giving that she receives.

“It’s exciting and you know, I hope that somebody will buy it and be happy with it. I like to see what they say or think. Sometimes they come and say, ‘I love your towels.’ And they’ll say that they don’t find this stuff at other churches and it makes you feel good,” she says. “I do all this stuff in the winter, work on it. I start in the fall. And it’s a fun hobby in the dark winter months.

“Some days when I’m doing it, I might work on it in the morning and I might work on it until 10 or 12 or something and go back in the late afternoon, a couple of hours before dinner, and maybe for a while after dinner,” she says.

She says her late Aunt Amy created a quilt for the church, which hangs in the sanctuary, that includes pieces from all different members of the community. It’s all church-oriented and includes the history of the church.

“It’s really pretty and I think they’re going to let people in this year so they can see the quilt and go into the sanctuary,” she adds.

Yes, it’s time consuming, she says, but it’s so worth it.

“Yeah, it is lovely. It’s joyous. My favorite word is joy,” she says. “I love joy. It makes you happy.”