“Gifts of time and love are surely the basic ingredients of a truly merry Christmas.”
Peg Bracken
If you are a fan of #Christmas365, there is never a letdown after the holidays. This holiday season brought the heartwarming experience of holiday traditions, events, and concerts of nonprofits hosted by their incredible volunteers and staff. How wonderful to know that the gift of Christmas kindness continues throughout the year.
The celebrations sped by like a Santa train – or maybe his firetruck! (Thank you, firefighters!) The Eastern Orthodox Church celebrates Three Kings Day on January 19th this year, which I’m using as an excuse to roll out holiday posts a little longer to applaud so many lovely people and places that made the holiday bright.
This year’s cookie recipe for the annual holiday thank you is caramel snickerdoodles, which are both a sweet treat and fun to say. (My nickname for them is “dulce de leche cookies,” which is equally delightful. Since there’s no snickerdoodle aisle in the supermarket, for the sheer pleasure of it, enjoy asking, “Does the store carry dulce de leche?”) Regarding “snickerdoodle,” Cheryl’s Cookies notes that term comes from the German “schneckennudeln,” or “snail noodles,” the name for a pasta dish, then a cinnamon roll, and finally for a cookie that traveled with immigrants from Germany to the US in the early 1900’s. Other theories are that the name is from the Dutch snekrad (“wrinkle” or “crinkle”) or from the snipdoodle cinnamon-topped cake of the Pennsylvania Dutch. A final theory is that this is a silly promotional name that bakers created to appeal to children.
The caramel snickerdoodle recipe is via Southern Living, a new addition to the holiday repertoire that went over well. Helpful hints: Place the extra sugar for the cookie coating aside; in one gift batch, I rushed and put the extra into the batter, which resulted in cookies that were too sweet. Crunching the candy caramels in double baggies with a hammer works better than using a rolling pin; it also gets more laughs and a better result than using a food processor. This silliness offers family fun or cookie exchange bonding and may even start a TikTok trend.
“You can tell a lot about a person by the way they handle three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights.” Maya Angelou
With the speed of a run down a Berkshire ski slope, Christmas has arrived…and gone, less than a month after Thanksgiving this year. The Three Kings still travel towards the star as the Jewish faithful light their menorahs, so here’s a “merry mini” to keep the holiday cheer going.
Each December, the Stockbridge Chamber of Commerce recreates the much-beloved Norman Rockwell painting “Stockbridge Main Street at Christmas,” which was wonderful to experience before the pandemic (“Christmas in Stockbridge”). Despite the rain on that trip, everyone was in great spirits. Returning this Christmas was reassuring that the event is not only back but is even better and more fun for children including a visit with Santa and Mrs. Claus, a petting zoo, and face painting. Both on the first trip and this, visitors were friendly and considerate, offering to take photos of each other by the classic cars. (Classic car fans will enjoy chatting with proud owners of vintage cars, some from New Jersey.) Not only do the details from Norman Rockwell’s beloved painting come to life, but so does the vibe, which he might enjoy even more. For anyone looking for the holiday spirit, this is the perfect event to experience.
Close-up with Christmas tree in the second-floor window (Norman’s former studio) over the General Store (slightly lightened here for visibility)
The artist warms the darkened Red Lion Inn, formerly closed in the winter, with children and a Christmas tree-topped red Mercury
The Mercury comes to life along with the Red Lion Inn
Victorian carolers on the porch of the Red Lion Inn
The charm is in the details
Norman’s former studio above the General Store (with a 🎄); he later had a studio behind his home on South Street, which is now part of the nearby Norman Rockwell Museum.
Winter chapeau
Cute surprise 🐾
Beautiful detail
Santa’s reindeer at the petting zoo
Store windows display entries for the gingerbread house contest (Williams & Sons Country Store)
Historic Red Lion Inn
Visitors first arrived at the historic Red Lion Inn by stagecoach in 1773. Since then, additions to the original building starting in the 1800s and the accumulation of antique furniture and china have given the inn its unique character and charm.
A truly jolly and charming Santa at The Red Lion Inn (visiting for a different event)
Red Lion Inn
Party starter
Santa’s rooftop view and a few reindeer hoofprints 🦌
Santa’s daytime ride
A door to nowhere (2016), part of the historic inn’s ramshackle charm, long suspected of being Santa’s portal to the North Pole (effectively confirmed in “Red One”). Luggage dropped off here is never lost, just regifted.
Winterberry welcome
Norman Rockwell Museum
Why are Norman Rockwell and his work so beloved? His warmth and humor got his fellow Americans through the Great Depression and several wars, and they cheer us to this day. His illustrations depicted touchstone moments of life, which we all have in common. Mr. Rockwell worked mostly on deadlines to create covers for The Saturday Evening Post, whose editors gave him creative freedom. Over 47 years, he completed 323 covers for the bimonthly periodical, and his overall body of work includes an impressive 4,000-plus paintings. Admirably, as a consummate professional, he carried on with this cheer through some difficult personal times. Modestly, Norman Rockwell considered himself a commercial illustrator, not an artist. Each of his paintings tells a story, and Norman was excellent at casting. Favoring naturalism, he employed neighbors and friends as models instead of professionals. In interviews, they fondly recounted his style of direction, which set them at ease and enabled them to become the characters. Inherent in this collaboration was an element of trust.
“Pepsi Cola Santa,”1965, a second attempt as Santa initially appeared too tipsy
Original costume for “Pepsi Cola Santa”
In producing paintings often within two months, photography expedited the process and spared subjects from posing for lengthy periods in positions often too awkward to maintain. Some art critics chastised him for this, but with his training and talent, as noted, he did have the expertise to paint traditionally. As he said, he had an eye like a camera.
Norman Rockwell giving direction to one of his models (museum exhibition of 2009 via npr.org)
Originally a New Yorker, Norman Rockwell arrived in Stockbridge via Vermont. Regarding the town where he lived for the last 25 years of his life, Norman remarked that he loved living in a place where he knew everyone. He captured that happiness in “Stockbridge Main Street at Christmas”. The painting, which is on view at the Norman Rockwell Museum, has the spontaneous look of a snapshot. That “spontaneity” took the artist 11 years to capture between 1956 and December 1967. The work conveys someone taking in the view from across the street, perfectly depicted with a panorama. The golden light of welcoming shops owned by neighbors illuminates the winter blue sky and makes the painting feel suffused with love. (Even a darkened Red Lion Inn, formerly closed in the winter and now lively with Victorian carolers and visitors for the event, does not detract.) Though the holiday preparations look ordinary – people Christmas shopping, neighbors chatting, children throwing snowballs, the ordinary, everyday things are what we all appreciate after an absence, and Christmastime charms most of all. Painted during the time of the Vietnam War, the painting also reassures with its “changelessness, tranquility, and safety”. (massmoments.org)
“Tiny Tim and Bob Cratchit (God Bless Us Everyone),” 1934, cover The Saturday Evening Post
(“Christmas Homecoming,” 1948, cover for The Saturday Evening Post, December 25th. As noted in a Post blog, the mother Norman’s wife Mary, the returning son, their son, Jerry. To Mary’s left is their son Tommy in the plaid shirt, and their youngest son Peter is far left with glasses. Norman is pictured as the happy father who is smoking his pipe. The others are friends and neighbors and frequent models which adds to the warmth of the painting.)
The painter known for celebrating small-town Americana kept his work fresh and original in a professional life of fifty-six years. As he once remarked, “Commonplaces never become tiresome. It is we who become tired when we cease to be curious and appreciative. We find that it is not a new scene which is needed, but a new viewpoint.” With his classical art training, Mr. Rockwell could paint using a traditional process. At 15, he was already making Christmas cards professionally. The aspiring artist left high school after his sophomore year; he studied at the Chase Art School (Parsons School of Design) and later at the National Academy of Design and the Art Students League of New York. (The museum shares that Gerard ter Borch, Peter de Hooch, and Johannes Vermeer, who also used light to great effect, were three of Norman’s favorite artists.) As noted in “Frankly Norman,” a more -in-depth profile, by 19, Norman Rockwell was an associate art director at Boy’s Life, the magazine for the Boys Scouts.
Charming model of Stockbridge, generously donated by Carol Soeldner
“The Discovery,” 1956
A tired waiter after the celebration in a charcoal study for “Happy New Year,” Saturday Evening Post cover, December 29, 1945
His muscular Rosie the Riveter, a Saturday Evening Post cover, May 29, 1943, which reflects women’s movement into the workforce during World War II, takes inspiration from the Prophet Isaiah of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel, and shows his appreciation for European art. Additionally, the Post cover significantly popularized the role of Rosie. Mr. Rockwell later apologized to his model, the pretty and petite 19-year-old Mary Doyle Keefe, a part-time telephone operator from Vermont, for the transformation, which he explained was to convey a strong, inspirational larger-than-life figure. Ms. Keefe, delighted to be part of history, often participated in museum events and later appeared at the sale of the painting at Sotheby’s in 2002, when it sold for $4.9 million.
Mary Doyle Keefe, circa 1943, via ctpublic.org
Via Wiki
Via Wiki
Though the occasional critic derided Mr. Rockwell for idealizing American life, particularly as the appeal of abstract art grew, he was nonplussed, “Without thinking too much about it in specific terms, I was showing the America I knew and observed to others who might not have noticed.” (Christies.com) If we scroll through our iPhone photos or look back at snapshots, there are captures of some perfect moments that may have passed our notice. Rather than idealizing life, Mr. Rockwell keenly observed the good. “Stockbridge Main Street at Christmas” exemplifies how Norman Rockwell was inspired by life around him.
Fans like Steven Speilberg, originally from Haddonfield, NJ, and George Lucas, who surely wishes he were from New Jersey, admire Mr. Rockwell’s narrative paintings as “cinematic”. Both have purchased numerous works of the artist over the years, and share these in an exhibition “Telling Stories” at the Smithsonian Museum.
Some may not know that Norma Rockwell taught in a correspondence school for commercial art, which predated email and Zoom. Founded in Westport, Connecticut, by illustrator Albert Dorne in 1945, the Famous Artists School (FAS) offered home study with lessons designed by the respective “famous artists” to help returning GIs find work in the field of commercial art. At its peak, the school had 50 instructors working onsite. Requests for Norman’s class outpaced others due to his fame and success. Lucky students enrolled in Mr. Rockwell’s class, though other experienced illustrators often critiqued submitted work as was standard in those schools. (FAS attracted some famous students of the day including actors Tony Curtis and Charlton Heston, as well as singers Dinah Shore and Pat Boone.) Artist Jim Stafford was on a correspondence course with acquaintances of Norman Rockwell’s, and later, as a young soldier, Jim wrote to Norman and asked if he might visit him at his Stockbridge studio. After receiving an invitation, Jim and a friend went the studio, where Norman cast Jim as the window washer for a 1960 Post cover. In a paternal gesture, Mr. Rockwell tried to set Jim up with the model for the stenographer, but the real-life Jim was not as bold as his character. He did, however, appreciate that Norman critiqued the art that he brought.
Via saturdayeveningpost.com with an interesting article title to accompany the illustration
A fun fact is that Norman owned several dogs, which kept him company at his studio. A Collie dog named “Raleigh Rockwell,” who appeared on numerous Saturday Evening Post covers, was special. An account from “Dogs Society” shares that Raleigh so adored Norman that when his owner-pal was away in Europe once on business, Raleigh refused to eat and started to fade. His health deteriorating, Raleigh’s whiskers drooped and turned white. When Norman returned, he hand-fed Raleigh until he was well and promised never to leave him again if his whiskers returned to their natural color. Raleigh’s whiskers changed within a few weeks, and Norman kept his promise.
“Making Friends,”1929, with Raleigh via saturdayeveningpost.com
Enjoy Norman Rockwell’s heartwarming holiday themed paintings in “Home for the Holidays” through February 25th at the Norman Rockwell Museum, Stockbridge, just a short drive from Main Street. Other exhibitions include “Anita Kunz: Original Sisters Portraits of Tenacity and Courage,” “Illustrators of Light: Rockwell, Wyeth, and Parrish from the Edison Mazda Collection,” “Norman Rockwell: Illustrating Humor,” and more.
The striking Stockbridge Naumkeag, named after the Naumkeag tribe, an Eastern Algonquin-speaking people, is a Gilded Age cottage. The mansion is on the National Register of Historic Places, and the entire estate is a National Historic Landmark District. The former is the work of the renowned architect Stanford White of McKim, White, & Mead, who built the country retreat for prominent lawyer Joseph Hodges Choate, who helped found the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and his wife Caroline Dutcher Sterling Choate, a proponent of women’s education who co-founded the Brearley School and Barnard College. In non-architectural terms, Naumkeag looks like a fairy tale cottage that morphed into a mansion while keeping its charm. With thoughts of spring, when Naumkeag reopens in May, the grounds include beautiful gardens, notably the Rose Garden, the Afternoon Garden, and the Chinese Garden, designed by Fletcher Steele, and summer brings Tanglewood to nearby Lenox.
Magical welcome at “Winterlights”
Stunning library with live music
Beautiful menorah
Wishing trees 🕊️✨
Norman Rockwell celebrated at the Doctor Sax House (hotel) in nearby Lenox
Doctor Sax House, Lenox, 1874, and dulu Cafe & Lounge
Holiday cheer at Michael’s Restaurant, Stockbridge
The Lost Lamb (from an October visit)
Santa welcomes customers at Tiffany’s Cafe & Market
Since all roads lead to New Jersey, a revisit to a Rockwell gem at the Nassau Inn, not far from the Arts Council of Princeton, also noted in ”Frankly Norman,” is a must:
Partial view of the Rockwell mural “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” not quite the Three Kings, but still weaving it in, from the Yankee Doodle Tap Room, Nassau Inn, dating back to 1769; rebuilt in 1938. Mentioned in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s This Side of Paradise, a fun reminder from Wiki
Beautiful Christmas tree at Palmer Square
Three hundred and fifty-four sleeps till Christmas
Never too early to mention that “Stockbridge Main Street at Christmas” festivities are December 6th-7th in 2025 with more details about weekend events via the Stockbridge Chamber of Commerce. No matter what the weather brings, visitors will receive a warm welcome and be in good company.
Happy New Year and thank you for following! Enjoy making another delightful holiday cookie recipe from Nutley, New Jersey’s Martha Stewart in Martha Stewart Living:
Ingredients
1 cup
salted butter, softened
1 cup
granulated sugar
1 large
egg
1 teaspoon
vanilla
2 ½ cups
all-purpose flour, plus more for work surface
¼ teaspoon
salt
Royal Icing
1 (16-ounce)
package of powdered sugar
3
tablespoons meringue powder
6 to 8
tablespoons warm water
Leaf green
coloring gel
2 (6-inch) lollipop sticks or wooden skewers
Directions
Prepare the cookies: Beat butter and sugar with a heavy-duty stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment on medium speed until light and fluffy for 3 minutes. Add eggs and vanilla; beat until incorporated for 30 seconds. Gradually add flour and salt, beating until combined for 1 minute. Remove dough from bowl; shape into flat disk. Cover with plastic wrap. Chill at least 2 hours or up to 24 hours.
Preheat oven to 350° F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Transfer dough to a lightly floured work surface. Roll to 1/8-inch thickness. (Note: This makes crispy cookies, but ¼ inch has more texture according to preferences.) Using a 4 ½ inch dove-shaped cookie cutter, cut out dough. Reroll scraps twice to cut 36 cookies total. Arrange two inches apart on prepared baking sheets. Flip half the cookies to face in the opposite direction. Bake in two batches until slightly golden on edges but pale in centers, 8 to 10 minutes. Cool on baking sheets 5 minutes/ Transfer to a wire rack. Cool completely, about 30 minutes.
Prepare the Royal Icing. Beat powdered sugar, meringue powder, and 6 tablespoons of the warm water with an electric mixer on low speed until combined, 1 minute. Increase to medium, and beat until smooth, about 2 minutes. Beat in remaining 2 tablespoons warm water, ¼ teaspoon at a time, as needed until desired consistency is reached. Transfer 2 tablespoons Royal Icing to a small bowl; stir in 1 drop food coloring until well combined. Cover and set aside. Spoon remaining undyed icing into a ziplock plastic freezer bag with a small corner snipped off (or into a piping bag with a small round tip).
Pipe a border of undyed icing around each cookie. Flood with additional icing. Using a wooden pick, spread icing to piped border inside edges to ice cookies fully. Let stand until icing is set, 1 hour. Pipe wings onto cookies with some of the undyed icing. Spoon reserved green icing into a ziplock plastic freezer bag with a small corner snipped off (or onto piping bag fitted with a small round tip). Pipe 1 olive branch beneath each dove’s beak. Let stand until icing is set, 30 minutes.
Place 2 (6-inch) lollipop sticks or wooden skewers on a sheet of parchment paper. Pipe a ½ inch-long strip of undyed icing along the top of each stick. Place one cookie on top of icing on each stick. Place one cookie on the top of each stick. Press lightly to adhere. Let stand until dry, 2 hours…. Store in an airtight container for up to 3 days.
Notes: Two egg whites, beaten, can substitute for the meringue powder. A small tube of green decorating icing might be a helpful substitute the piping. The recipe places the olive branch piping near the dove’s mouth. Didn’t use the lollipop sticks on this first try, but that idea looks like fun.
Holiday decor: The ornament is from Murdough’s Christmas shop, Stone Harbor. The plaque and Christmas countdown calendar are from Prim & Proper Primitives, Smithville, and the mug is from the Village Sweet Shoppe, also inSmithville.
“Peace Dove Cookies” @2021 Kathleen Helen Levey. All rights reserved.
