Oysterville Church, Christmas 2013

For the fourth consecutive season, community members are invited to an informal Christmas Carol Sing-a-long at the Oysterville Church on Sunday, December 22nd at 2:00 o’clock.  As in the past, Dobbie Wiegardt will read the  Christmas story from the Book of Luke,  and members of the Bayside singers will participate.    The “stars” of the program will be the audience members who will be singing to piano accompaniment by Diane Buttrell.

My mother and her siblings often reminisced fondly of the “Christmas Programs” held each year in the church during the 19-teens and ’20s when they were growing up here. The one-room schoolhouse was too small to accommodate all the parents and community members so, the festivities took place in the church — in the Methodist Church until it blew down in 1922 and in the Baptist (now Ecumenical) Church  after that. (No separation of church and state in those days!)   They remembered that the program was elaborate — each child “recited” a poem or special “piece” appropriate to the occasion and each was costumed by enthusiastic mothers.  Mom remembered that when she was in first grade, she said a short poem about “a robin redbreast” and that her mother had made her an outfit with “beautiful bird wings.”

Oysterville Church, December 2008

Under the large Christmas tree in the Sunday School Room was a present for each child and, also, mom said, “one for each of the bachelors.”  I believe those were single men — widowed or unmarried, who lived in the old Stevens Hotel just north of our house during those years.  It was no longer run as a hotel — more as a boarding house in those days.

The program, of course, included Christmas carols which were sung by the audience as well as by the school children.  We’ll be carrying on an old tradition on Sunday — minus the school children, to be sure — but full of the season’s spirit and Oysterville’s historic charm .  I look forward to sharing that time with you!