Today we ran our annual Holiday Workshop. Here is a picture of many of the originators of the Holiday Workshop which was taken in 2008. I talked with Dori Reuss (the one in front not in the red sweater, but mauve turtleneck) who was one of the originators of the Holiday Workshop. Here are some of her memories of the origins.
"Originally called the "Christmas Workshop", I recall it as an outgrowth of Tracey Robinson-Harris and the Religious Education Committee (of which Connie and I were members). My guess is that it began in the early 1980s. Connie and I organized them for maybe eight or ten years. Many of the traditions begun back then have carried over to this next generation's version: Parker Hall, tables set along the two walls, fire in the fireplace, Christmas music.
Original tables included Allen and his woodworking project, Jim Quick with an evergreen table to make into hanging door decorations, Marty Kvaal in the kitchen creating Stained Glass Cookies (chopped-up lollipops placed into "frames" made of rolled cookie dough), Joyce Fearnside helping kids cut out snowflakes, Helen creating cards for elder members and shut-ins, Meg LeSchack fashioning Scandinavian woven paper baskets as tree decorations, and I making the small colored salt bottles.
My reinvolvement began in a wonderful way! Through my work in the LPS Early Childhood Special Education Department, I encountered Margaret at Hancock Nursery School (whose son was in the same class as the little boy with whom I was working). "Amazing!", I'd thought, "There's Connie Counts!" A bit of a time warp, to be sure, as it was Margaret (somehow I'd thought, perhaps, that I hadn't aged 20+ years!!) She mentioned taking over the Holiday Workshop -- my memories were so positive that I'd offered to help!
Margaret reintroduced two traditions which had been lost in the intervening years. The first was to gather 50 or 60 beer flats from local liquor stores the week before the event, placing them by the door so kids could have something in which to carry their gifts. The second was identifying a collection place for all the participants (children and adults) to leave a gift or two for the women and children at Renewal House. Years ago, when Connie and I first started, we'd had an old wooden house of sorts into which gifts were placed -- a realistic visual cue. Somewhere through the years, it was auctioned off and disappeared. So this year, we left a cardboard box with a simple roof at the exit spot and people filled it with 30 or 40 items. Jane Beswick had connected with the people at Renewal House, and the Monday after the Holiday Workshop she and Brenda Prusak and I delivered them. I was amazed to see the new setting for Renewal House, embedded within a tall business-type building with a double security system. When MaryAnn Armstrong and I had delivered the gifts years ago, usually with our four kids in tow, it had been an old Victorian house whose whereabouts were a closely-guarded secret. My kids (now ages 35 + 32) can still remember sitting on the floor with the kids at Renewal House while they opened their small treasures -- lots of laughter and joy!"
