Willow Leaves November 29

Holiday Decorations Abound Willow Mills is all dressed up for the winter holidays. With a light dusting of snow over the weekend, and all the festive lights, this sleepy little town could grace a Courier and Ives print. On North Main St., the new Santa lights on our lamposts tie in well with the decorations in merchant windows from the Post Office to the Funeral Home. South on Main, Hanukah Menorahs light the posts from the Drugstore to the Fire Station. Hanukah begins on Friday evening this week and goes until the 10th. East on Market, the WiseMen and Shepherds mark the way to a manger scene south of the school, while west on Market holly and candles celebrate the coming winter solstice on December 22 (2:44 a.m. EST). Of course at the center hub in Fountain Square, a 40' cone of some 10,000 lights illuminates the city center until midnight each night. Hundreds of flashing white lights lok for all the world like twinkling stars in a bright green sky. This year’s Fountain Square display is sponsored by The Grange and they really outdid themselves. Be sure to follow the streets just one and two blocks off Main and Market to see how the homes of Willow Mills have decorated. Icicles and snowy roofs are a predominant theme this year, but an increasing number of “block clubs” are creating block-long displays that connect from house to house with a single theme. Notable among the block clubs and worth a drive to visit is the Willow Woods community. Residents have once again recreated scenes from the Nutcracker. We remind people that during this season all streets in Willow Woods are one-way. Just keep to the right after you enter and you will see all the displays in order. We expect as many as 5,000 cars, some from as far away as Ft. Wayne, to make the trek to see the lights this year.

Just Another Season

There was once a time in Willow Mills when everyone celebrated Christmas… or nothing. Then the sixties came along. You remember: The Great Society, draft card and bra burnings, and the historic banning of prayer in public schools.

No one thought much about the fact that the Fountain Square was always decorated with a creche, a Christmas tree and Santas. It fell on Adelaide Kitchner to bring up at a town budgeting meeting that it wasn’t right for the town to be spending money on symbols of the Christian Religion just because Christmas was a popular holiday. She posited that the town should decorate only with merchandising symbols of the season, Santas and gifts, and not with wise men and mangers.

It created quite a stir. But Adelaide was a crafty negotiator. She let the uproar grow only to righteous protest and offered an olive branch before it reached religious outrage.

“Now I have nothing against Christmas or the Christian celebration,” said Adelaide. “I like a party as much as anyone. And I even enjoy the children carolling and have put many a dollar in the Salvaton Army bucket. But there are only two churches active in this town with a combined membership of about 300. And there are 700 people who live here. I think it is only right that we find out what the other half think and be fair to everyone, not just those who go to church.”

The furor died down and Adelaide proposed a door-to-door survey of the community to determine what symbols people associated with the winter holidays. If the majority of those surveyed listed symbols clearly Christian in nature, she would retract her objections. But if the majority were non-Christian, or ambivalent about the symbols, she would have to assume that using them as town decorations was a blatant attempt at evangelism and had no right being supported with tax money.

The meeting voted by a narrow margin to test Adelaide’s theory and lay this matter to rest once and for all. After some discussion about methodology, Adelaide presented a prepared survey form and a list of volunteers. The survey began the next morning, with surprising results.

Of the 310 households surveyed, a solid majority chose non-Christian symbols as their first pick of holiday symbols, but of these, there was no clear majority. They ranged from Santa Claus and snowflakes to holly, mistletoe, and Minoras. Wreaths, trees, lights, reindeer, stars, moon, candles, garlands, sleds, jingle bells, red, green, white, horses, skis, trains, and elves were all represented on the list. The list of Christian symbols was also varied: manger, wise men, shepherds, star, angels, steeples, choirs.

At the next town meeting, a newly emboldened majority, spoke their feelings of isolation and alienation. And, since no individual group held a majority, they started working on a compromise that is unique to Willow Mills. They would honor all the symbols of all the holidays celebrated in wintertime with the decorations in the town. It would be a time for everyone to celebrate and be included.

The decorating of Fountain Square is passed around from group to group in the town, each group being responsible for the purchase, creation, decoration, and maintenance of the square for that season. People have gotten so into the idea of expressing different celebrations of winter that entire blocks in the town get together to create a theme in lights, decorations, and displays. Last year we even had Kwanzaa and Ramadan decorations displayed in town, and Stringtown in its own off-center way has its own display of Chinese New Year symbols, though to our knowledge no one in Stringtown has any Chinese heritage in their backgrounds. Some years ago, Willow Woods established a theme of The Nutcracker and each house decorates with a different scene from the story.

And if it looks odd to have a different kind of decoration on every block in town, it is nonetheless a kind of tourist mecca between Thanksgiving and January 5th (12th Night) each year. And that’s the way people like it.