Being Guided By Our Past

Written By: Mary Jane McCall | Issue: December 2024

The Highlands Historical Society wrapped up another successful season with the seasonal closing of the Museum and Prince House at the end of October.

Lovers of Highlands history shouldn’t fret though, because so much information is still available on our website at highlandshistory.com. We invite you to explore our site when you have time as it offers a plethora of information on Highlands, including videos, photographs, and a great selection of books for sale.

We thought that we might give you a glimpse into the pages of several of those books and share stories of Christmases past.

Helen Hill Norris reminds us in her book Historic Tales of Highlands Looking Backward that giving to others is always an important part of the season. She recounts one Christmas when the weather in the weeks leading up to Christmas was so bad that they couldn’t make it to Highlands from Horse Cove for gifts and provisions. Doing what mountain people do, they worked as a team and made a homemade Christmas to remember with delicious food filling the house with the fragrance of Christmas, singing hymns by a crackling fire, sleigh rides, homemade gifts, and a beautiful Christmas tree strung with popcorn garlands and sprinkled with powdered mica dust to look like snow.

At the end of their long day of preparations Helen writes that “Suddenly, Mother said, ‘Helen, that little girl living up under Black Rock Mountain in one of our renting cabins will have no Christmas.’ Oh my goodness! We must do something. What did she do? She packed up a good-sized box with such things as we could spare, and taking me by the hand, away we went over the snow, a half-mile up the trail so that one little child would find there really was a Santa Claus next morning.”

One of our founding members and lifelong supporter of the Highlands Historical Society, Isabel Hall Chambers, and her husband Overton Chambers, tell of a magical Christmas Eve Service at the Episcopal Church of the Incarnation in their book Remembering Highlands From Pioneer Village to Mountain Retreat. “After Communion, and just when we were going to sing the last hymn, the power went off and the lights went out. The altar candles became the only illumination in the church. The closing hymn was ‘Silent Night’ – with an electronic organ that Isabel couldn’t play. Except for the wind, it was very silent. Someone, we don’t remember who, began the first line of the hymn, and then gradually everyone joined in. Miraculously, the starting pitch was good for all those singing, so we sang ‘Silent Night’ a cappella.”

We hope your holidays are merry and invite you, as our ancestors did, to always find time to reach out to others, and always remember the reason for the season.