December 6, 2025
Saturday
Please note:
The 2025 Christmas Tea is cancelled.
— announcement on the website of The Heidelberg Heritage Society
date it was first posted unknown
It’s been on my calendar for weeks: the annual Christmas Tea at the The Heidelberg Heritage Society in Wernersville, PA, an organization dear to my heart. A 19th century quilt held there features prominently in my unfinished (stalled, really) historical novel set in that landscape. The novel and the society are two things I’ve drifted away from with in these two frustrating lost years. A few weeks ago I even sent a message to an estranged friend who lives nearby, someone I used to meet regularly in a popular pizza place on Main Street for some girlfriend time. Reconciliation is always possible, I said, and told her I’d be in town on December 7, in case . . .
This morning I looked up the event to determine the time and which of the two venues the Society owns it would take place in. And saw the notice. And sighed.
Such things are happening a lot. The dedicated volunteers who mount such events are finding it harder and harder to sustain the traditions. Those who have been in the leadership for decades are tired, no longer able to muster the physical energy needed, or relocated in retirement to distant sunny climes. Younger people have not stepped up to fill those roles, and money for supplies and advertising is scarcer than it was.
I moped, for a while. I had this all planned, I said to myself. I was counting on it, to provide some structure to this season, to recover some of the joys of temps perdu as I recreate myself. And then I remembered the notion that when one door closes, another opens.
Tomorrow I will be attending a performance of The Nutcracker by the Pennsylvania Regional Ballet, a lavish event with guest artists, sparkling sets, in a theater I know and like. The best part — the three performances will include in the corps de ballet a young friend of mine, a girl who is a member of my Lutheran congregation whom I have known from her birth a few months before my first grandson’s. Her mother and I are Facebook friends and genuine friends as well, and I’ve followed her dance development from that of a toddler imitating dance videos she’d watch as her mother homeschooled her older brother to a poised and polished nine-year-old enrolled in PRB’s serious professional school.
Why didn’t I do this right away? I don’t know. I don’t care. I’ve been to Christmas Teas before. And I’ve seen The Nutcracker before, multiple times. I’ve even played in the pit orchestra, more than once. But I’ve never seen Soraya dance.
I can’t wait!