Lisle holiday celebration forges ahead with nod to the past
The Museums at Lisle Station Park furnished the setting Sunday for a 19th century-style Christmas.
Families stepped back in time and sampled the season as a suburban resident might have in the days before radio and the mass-production of automobiles.
The mood of the "Once Upon a Christmas" celebration was enhanced by the timely arrival of snow, giving the grass and trees a festive layer of white.
Concetta Gibson, museum curator, said "Once Upon a Christmas" is a joint effort of the Lisle Heritage Society and the Lisle Park District.
"We try to bring back the heritage of the area and what people in the 1800s or the early 1900s would have been doing around the holidays," she said.
Children had the opportunity to pet reindeer that stood in the snow near a 1881 Chicago, Burlington & Quincy railcar.
Sarah Vavruska, who grew up in Lisle but lives in Oswego, brought her husband, Jay, and 2-year-old son, P.J.
"I came here when we first moved to Lisle, when I was about 7 or 8, and I thought it was the coolest thing ever," she said. "It was cool seeing Santa and the train museum. I was at the age when I didn't really believe anymore and it kind of just kept the spirit going a little bit longer for me, so I wanted to bring (my son) back here."
Santa held court at the Lisle Depot Museum, in a room filled with artifacts from Lisle's days as a milk shipping center.
Children who waited in line in the cold warmed up on Santa's knee as they revealed their wishes before fortifying themselves with ginger and oatmeal cookies and hot cider.
Samantha Witman of Lisle told Santa - actually Roger Olson - that she wanted a bath time doll.
At the blacksmith's shop, guests watched as Jim Fousek labored at an anvil, fashioning decorative steel leaves. Nearby, Brian Ginn, dressed in a Union infantry uniform, worked at a lathe, shaping a rail banister or the leg of a chair.
In the 1850s-era Netzley-Yender Farmhouse, fresh apple pies and cornbread were baked in the beehive oven of the summer kitchen, using old-style recipes.
In the Beaubien Tavern building, children worked on crafts, including snowflakes made from coffee filters.
Stephanie Gerst, whose children Elliot, 6, and Abby, 9, were at one of the crafting tables said of the celebration, "It's our family ritual. Today, it's perfect with the snow. It's extra-perfect. It's a different way to do Santa. It's not like the malls."