In Lancaster, Christmas as it used to be
By Theresa Gawlas Medoff
The Inquirer
December 2, 2007
LANCASTER - Jim Morrison recalls the Christmases of his youth as a magical time. The season commenced the day after Thanksgiving, when the entire family rode an early-morning bus from Haddonfield to Philadelphia, where they joined the crowds on the sidewalks awaiting the unveiling of the stores’ Christmas window displays.
“I knew exactly what Santa’s elves looked like because I saw them at work in those windows,” Morrison says.
The kid-size monorail and giant tree at Wanamakers, the miniature train set-ups in hardware stores, the department-store Santas who gave out clear toy lollipops - Morrison remembers it all as if it were yesterday. A collector of all things Christmas, he opened the National Christmas Center in Lancaster to showcase a staggering collection of Santas, crèches, ornaments, toys, cards, books and artwork - both his own and items on loan from other Christmas aficionados.
The life-size dioramas and animatronic figures in the Tudor Towne exhibit tell an enchanting children’s story of how a town of animals celebrates Christmas. Another exhibition uses lifelike statues to show Santa Claus figures from around the world. This year, Morrison is adding a “Memories of Philadelphia” display with historical photos - ephemera like a Sealtest paper wreath, and children’s books given out by Gimbels, Lit Brothers and other bygone Philadelphia businesses.
A large, walk-in room re-creates an early Woolworth’s store at Christmastime - the first successful Woolworth’s opened in Lancaster in 1879. The display is a sentimental favorite of Morrison’s; he bought his first Christmas collectibles - three houses for a miniature Christmas village - at Woolworth’s as a 7-year-old. And, yes, those three houses are now part of the exhibition.
“It’s all about preserving the essence of Christmas,” says the man who calls himself Santa Jr. and whose hefty stature and natural gray-white beard make him a Santa look-alike. The same could be said of Lancaster County during the holiday season. Lancaster done right, that is - avoiding the strip malls, outlets and tourist traps on the congested part of Route 30 nearest the city of Lancaster.
The Germans who settled this area contributed some of our more beloved Christmas traditions - decorated evergreens, miniature villages served by toy trains, even candy canes. So it’s not surprising that the county evokes Christmas fantasies - a journey that begins when you pull off the highway and onto the two-lane back roads of this primarily rural area.
Rolling farmlands alternate with small towns where the sidewalks are lined with hundred-year-old homes that have front porches designed for neighborliness. Here, it’s the automobiles that seem out of place, not the horse-drawn carriages of the Amish and Mennonites.
Visitors to the Landis Valley Museum walk through the streets and buildings of a living history village that represents the Pennsylvania German culture of 18th-, 19th- and early-20th century Lancaster County. For years museum volunteers had adorned the village with evergreen branches and other small holiday touches, but only in the last five years has the museum highlighted extensively old local holiday traditions, a mini-lesson in Christmas history.
The museum’s early-1800s tavern, for example, features an evergreen tree hung upside down from the ceiling to prevent mice from nibbling its adornment of edible cookies and dried fruit. The Landis Brothers House incorporates a Victorian-style feather tree and traditional German miniature “putz” nativity scene.
At the museum’s Country Christmas Village (Friday through Sunday and Dec. 14-16 and 26-28) visitors will encounter Belsnickel, a gruff peddler in tattered clothes who carries a switch to punish bad children and candies to reward good ones. The German Belsnickel was a precursor of our Santa.
The pleasant scenery on Route 741 west of Gap evokes Sunday drives of old, when the journey itself was the enjoyment, but a reward lies ahead in Strasburg, where the railroad is still king. Those who grew up with a miniature train layout under the Christmas tree will delight in the oversized display at Choo Choo Barn, the outgrowth of a setup that began about 50 years ago in the basement of the Groff family, which still owns and operates Choo Choo Barn.
The 1,700-square-foot walk-around display features 20 operating O-gauge trains crisscrossing the farms and villages of a miniature Lancaster County, over bridges, through tunnels and past a ski slope. Electricity brings to life more than 150 animated figures, including an Amish barn-raising, dairy farm, three-ring circus, amusement park and baseball game.
The operating layouts at the National Toy Train Museum in Strasburg are neither as large nor as elaborate as Choo Choo Barn’s. This museum instead focuses on the history of toy trains, displaying hundreds of locomotives and cars from the late 1800s to today. Train collectors will be fascinated. A recent visit found numerous families with little boys enjoying the museum, too, but if you go to only one place to see toy train layouts, make it the Choo Choo Barn.
Train lovers can experience the real thing by taking a ride on the Strasburg Rail Road, one of America’s oldest short-line steam railways. Operating hours are abbreviated in December, but special events include the popular Day Out with Thomas and Santa’s Paradise Express.
Across the street, the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania exhibits more than 100 cars and locomotives, including the interiors of sleepers and dining cars.
Lancaster County offers visitors a chance to shop the way we all once did - strolling the streets of a real downtown, patronizing small, locally owned stores and, best of all, escaping much of the crowds. The little town of Intercourse has more than 30 craft, food, gift and furniture stores within walking distance along Old Philadelphia Pike (Route 340) and East Newport Road (Route 772) and within the Kitchen Kettle Village complex. Among the out-of-the-ordinary gifts available are locally made quilts, traditional folk arts and crafts, and local food specialties.
Downtown Lancaster makes an enjoyable shopping excursion, mostly near Penn Square on Market, Prince, King and Orange. At the heart of the district is Central Market, the oldest continuously operating farmers market in the country. The current building is a modest 114 years old, but the market itself has been operating on this site since the 1730s.
Market stalls offer Pennsylvania Dutch meats, baked goods and preserves alongside Greek specialties and organic foods. Pick up some traditional springerle molded cookies and hand-painted ornaments from the Springerle House market stall.
Numerous art galleries sprinkled throughout the downtown area sell high-quality local crafts as well as fine arts from regional and international artists. Two museum stores worth a look are those at the Heritage Center Museum on King Street and at the Lancaster Quilt and Textile Museum on Market Street.
Visit the Quilt Museum itself to see the “Lancaster Christmas” exhibition introduced last year. The sentimental re-creation of Christmases past was curated by the National Christmas Center’s Morrison. Eight life-size room settings depict Pennsylvania holiday celebrations through the years, from the simpler decor of the 1850s to the 1960s, when aluminum trees lit by color wheels were all the rage. Woolworth’s 5-&-10-cent store makes an appearance here, too.
Downtown Lancaster’s Old Fashioned Holiday Weekends, the first three weekends of December, feature horse-drawn carriage rides, trolley tours, and Santa himself.
Strasburg’s tiny downtown, at the crossroads of Routes 741 and 896, has a few shops worth visiting. Eldreth Pottery specializes in traditional salt-glazed stoneware and Pennsylvania redware pottery. Springerle House has its main store here, and 70 antiques and collectible dealers showcase their wares at the Strasburg Antique Market in a restored tobacco warehouse.
Lancaster County seems to have more than its share of theaters, and their holiday shows tend to cost less than those in larger cities. Sight & Sound Millennium Theatre’s Miracle of Christmas presents a musical rendition of the birth of Jesus with a large cast, live animals on stage, and impressive special effects.
Amish Family Christmas at Freedom Chapel Dinner Theatre depicts the holiday celebration of the fictional King family, and Dutch Apple Dinner Theatre presents Irving Berlin’s White Christmas, a musical based on the 1954 Bing Crosby movie.
American Musical Theatre boasts that its Christmas Show “is constantly compared to Radio City Music Hall.” At $32 for adults and $16 for children, ticket prices for the Lancaster variety show go for considerably less than those to Radio City’s Christmas Spectacular.
Holiday time brings nostalgia for the “good old days,” when to many people, Christmas seemed simpler and more meaningful. Lancaster County in December can’t bring back those days, but it offers a chance to recapture the feeling.
Lancaster County Christmas
Lancaster County, west of Philadelphia, is about a 60- or 75-minute drive. The leisurely trip is along Route 30, also called the Old Lincoln Highway, where traffic can be heavy. The Pennsylvania Turnpike is the fast way to reach the county by car or truck. Amtrak trains and Greyhound buses run between Philadelphia and Lancaster.