Christmas Newswire

Poor Port St. Lucie, Florida. For years they have been teased in the media because their Christmas tree kept dying. Season after season the city spent thousands in an effort to replace a beloved city symbol in a tree that had served well for decades but succumbed to a disease. They planted new trees each year for six year before finally giving up and paying an outrageous rate for an artificial tree last year.

So this year, they are trying to get it right.

Having been burned with an unpopular $11,750 Christmas tree rental last year, city employees are asking council members early this year whether they want to continue renting a pricey tree - and take advantage of an early-bird discount before June 28 - or forego the holiday tradition in this tree-challenged city.

For the second year, Budget Director Dave Pollard is recommending renting rather than buying a faux fir, saying it would cost more to buy an artificial tree and pay crews to erect and store it each year.

Council members tried to cancel the rental for last year in November after learning of the steep price tag but were told it was too late. The Sept. 1 deadline had passed.

Determined not to follow that course again, Pollard wrote to City Manager Don Cooper last week, asking for direction well in advance of the Christmas holidays.

Two council members said they won’t go for the pricey rental but would support buying a cut tree at a fraction of the cost. Vice Mayor Jack Kelly said he will support a tree only if a donor agrees to pay the tab, much like what occurred last year after people complained about the $11,750 rental cost.

“I’ve been told we could get a nice cut tree from up north for about $3,000,” Kelly said. “As much attention as this tree gets, nobody could get better publicity for $3,000.”

Councilwoman Michelle Berger agreed that a live, cut tree is the way to go. Anything is better than the “ugly” artificial tree displayed in front of city hall last year, she said.

“I was disappointed to think that anybody, no matter who it is, wrote a check for $11,750 for that tree,” Berger said. “Buy a cut tree, put it in the middle of the civic center plaza and let it smell like Christmas.”

Parks crews plan to move the annual tree-lighting ceremony from city hall to the civic center being built at U.S. 1 and Walton Road. Eight real Christmas trees have died of mysterious causes on the front lawn of city hall since 1999, prompting the controversial decision last year to rent.

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When the Hock family Christmas tree goes up this year, one ornament is likely to stand out.

The small, silver nutcracker, which marks a child’s first Christmas, was nearly lost.

Come December, “We would have wondered where it was,” Meg Hock said last week of the ornament that contains a photo of her oldest son, J.D.

The memento, which includes her son’s full name, John Douglas, and the year of his first Christmas, 1999, was discovered earlier this year by Jim Chadwick of Old Greenwich as he and his father discarded their Christmas tree at Greenwich Point Park.

In looking over the piles of evergreens, the 14-year-old Stanwich School student noticed the object within the branches of one of the trees.

Jim brought it back to his home in the hopes of tracking down its owner. Despite the family’s efforts, the owner remained unidentified until a story in the Greenwich Time last week helped to unravel the mystery.

The story, published Wednesday, told of the Chadwick family’s efforts to find the owners. It ran alongside a photo of the ornament.

Hock, who grew up in Greenwich and now lives in Riverside with her family, said several people contacted her family, including an acquaintance who thought the picture looked like her 4-year-old son Andrew.

Recalling that morning, she said, “I ran out to the driveway to get the newspaper, wondering if it could be J.D.”

Her hunch turned out to be correct as she found herself staring at her son’s picture.

“It’s one of the ornaments we are most fond of,” she said, noting it was the first in a tradition that would ultimately mark all three of her children’s first Christmases.

The ornament had fallen and had become nestled in the inner branches of the Hocks’ tree last year, and rather than upsetting the other decorations and lights, she said she planned on retrieving it before discarding their tree.

Excited to collect what had mistakenly been left behind on the tree, Hock said she called the Chadwicks and arranged to have her son meet with Jim so he could shake his hand and thank him.

That afternoon, she picked J.D. up from Riverside School and showed him the Greenwich Time story.

“He was so excited when he saw the article,” she said.

J.D. said last week he was pleased someone had discovered the treasure. “I thought it would be exciting to meet the man who found it.”

At the Chadwicks’ home, J.D. and Jim met, giving Hock a chance to take a photo of both of them together.

Both moms said the experience was a good lesson for their sons.

“I think it was an eye-opener that people really are wonderful,” Hock said. “You try and teach your children to be good citizens. You try and teach them that if you do good things for good people then good things will happen to you.”

In thanking the Greenwich Time for publishing the article, Patricia Chadwick said it helped to prove the value of being proactive.

“I think it reinforces the idea that you can make good things happen by taking them into your own hands,” she said.

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A Christmas card from Anne Frank has been found in a Dutch antique shop.

The card, bearing the signature of the schoolgirl who hid from the Nazis for years in an Amsterdam house before being caught, was sent in 1937 two years before war broke out.

It was addressed to Samme Ledermann, one of Anne’s best friends, and postmarked from Aachen, a town just across the Dutch border in Germany, said Maatje Mostard, of the Anne Frank Museum.

The postcard, with a picture on the front of a Christmas-decorated bell in the foreground and a snow-covered field behind it, was signed “Anne Frank” with no other hand-written message.

Ms Mostard said it was the second such card the museum had seen. “We know it’s an original,” she added.

Teacher Paul van den Heuvel found the Christmas greeting in a box of cards in the shop owned by his father in the town of Naarden, 10 miles east of Amsterdam.

He was gathering material on Anne Frank for his school to mark Liberation Day, the May 5 anniversary of the end of German occupation, when he came across the card.

The museum, which encompasses the small Amsterdam apartment where the Frank family hid from the Nazis for 25 months, has the largest collection of documents and papers on Anne Frank, whose diary is the most widely read book relating to the Holocaust.

Anne, her parents and sister and four other Jews hiding in the apartment were arrested in August 1944 and deported to Auschwitz.

The sisters were later sent to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp where Anne died of typhus in March 1945, two weeks before the camp was liberated. She was 15.

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Sad news for Christmas fans everywhere — the worst kind of predator is also known as “the best Santa ever”. News like this comes as parents and Santa Claus Employment agencies continue to grapple with issues revolving around the backgrounds of professional Santas.

A rare international alert seeking a man shown in dozens of raw child porn images quickly led to the arrest of a small-time actor, who painted faces at children’s parties and performed as “the best Santa Claus anyone has ever seen.”

Judy Stone, a neighbor who worked with him as an entertainer at corporate parties, art fairs and bar mitzvahs, said he did a wonderful job.

“He’s the best Santa Claus anyone has ever seen,” Stone said. “I’ve never seen him act in a way that was creepy or predatory toward children.”

Raven Squire, the superintendent of the apartment building where Corliss has lived for more than two decades, said Corliss was very computer savvy and had a cluttered apartment, but that he never saw anything inappropriate there.

“He’s a very amiable man, a great sense of wittiness,” Squire said. “He seemed very stable, always paid his rent.”

Corliss’ arrest came two days after Interpol took the rare step of asking for the public’s help. Two years of investigation had failed to determine the identity, whereabouts or even the nationality of the man seen in the pictures.

For more on this story, please see this link.

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In the name of health and safety many British towns may have to forego festive lighting this holiday season. According to a report in the Telegraph stringent new regulations and huge insurance premium increases could make Christmas lights scarce.

This year councils must use a pressure gauge to individually test every bolt holding a cable [...]

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The American Family Association took aim at Wal Mart last year — and won. After declaring “an open mind” when it came to the use of the word “Christmas” in their advertising, Wal Mart caved and splashed “Christmas” liberally. This year, the American Family Association is targeting a more upscale outfit: Mrs. Field’s Cookies.
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