Rye Town Park tree lighting (photo credit: Friends of Rye Town Park)

A bunch of Rye residents braved the rain on Tuesday evening and gathered at Barley Beach House to watch the Lawn Chair Theatre’s production of scenes from A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. After the show, I overheard one of the actors say, “That was so much fun, we should do it every year!” Perhaps this will become the next Rye holiday tradition. In a town where traditions are strong but the origins are sometimes mysterious, we thought it would be fun to take a Scrooge-like approach and look at Rye’s holiday traditions past, present and future. If there is one thing that binds our holiday traditions together over the decades, it is the sense of community they foster and the volunteerism that makes these events possible.

Last year, when the Rye Town Park Treelighting came together seemingly out of the blue in only a few weeks’ time, many of us were thrilled to have a family-friendly holiday gathering in the park. Who wants to fight the crowds to watch the tree light up in Rockefeller Center when we have our own multi-colored deciduous delight here on the corner of Forest and Rye Beach Avenue? Most of us had no idea how it happened, but we bundled up, bumped into neighbors and caroled along with Rhythm in Rye, a student a cappella group, in the glow of the brightly lit tree.

To learn more about the very short history of this event, I spoke with Julian Radford, who along with his wife, Katie, had the inspiration to get it off the ground a little over a year ago. Julian and Katie have lived in Rye for about two and a half years, and after attending the Fall Festival in Rye Town Park in 2018, they started asking why we didn’t have any winter events around the holidays. They are both from Australia, where candlelight Christmas carols is part of the magic of the season. As Julian said, “Here we have this bucolic park in the center of town that people forget about in the winter season. We wanted to give people a reason to gather there in the Christmas season”

Julian and Katie started to do some investigating to test the feasibility of this idea. They met with some of the people who work at Rye Town Park, interviewed electricians to get a sense of the constraints, and along with the help of the Rye Town Park Commission, they selected a tree that had a nearby source of electricity through a pole on the north end of the park. With a date set, they began marketing the tree lighting on social media, getting others involved as volunteers, lining up singers and ordering supplies for cocoa. The whole project took about three weeks from start to finish, and on the night of the event, there were over 250 people gathered in the park.

In its inaugural year, the goal of the Rye Town Park Christmas Tree Lighting was to prove that the concept worked. Now in its second year, this project became a team effort involving people throughout the town, including the Rye Town Park Commission, Friends of Rye Town Park, the police department, fire department and a handful of families who helped fund the event. It was planned and executed by a working group of about ten people, along with many volunteers who helped along the way. Barley Beach House, now open through the off-season, was fully booked in advance of the night. In place of a cappella this year, a local team of musicians led carols in the style of a barbershop quartet. Santa made a visit, riding atop a firetruck. The event by design is free and inclusive, open to everyone in the Rye community and beyond. The crowd doubled from last year, begging the question, what comes next? Julian envisions a winter wonderland with a horse drawn carriage and other attractions to build on the magic of the season. While the team takes a breather from their successful efforts, we hope you will enjoy the beautiful tree, which will remain lit for weeks to come.

The Radfords, like many Rye families with young children who attended the Rye Town Park Tree Lighting, are new to Rye, and in the short five years I’ve lived here, another volunteer-led tradition from not too long ago has come up in conversation on many occasions. The event is called First Night, and it began in Rye in 1997, part of a nationwide First Night trend that began in Boston. This New Years Eve event ran for a four or five years into the new millennium. First Night came to Rye through the vision and dedication of Connie and Bruce Macleod, who believed in creating a community-wide, family-friendly way to ring in the new year. In its first year, the event was centered on the Village Green, with various activities at the Rye Free Reading Room, City Hall, the Square House, on the Green and on Purchase Street. The Rye YMCA featured a velcro wall for daring children to jump and stick, wearing special velcro suits. Year after year, the event grew. Rye’s opening First Night probably had about 400 or 500 attendees, and in the last year, over 2000 people filled our downtown.

First Night Quilt

First Night Newspaper Article

First Night Program

In preparing that first year, Connie and Bruce wrote personal letters to their close friends, asking them to contribute to get the event up and running. Friends donated time and underwrote expenses, and those founding members still take pride today in what they built. First Night also was an inclusive event intended to appeal to everyone in town. With musical acts, magic shows, horse-drawn carriages and a train ride, there was an abundance of entertainment to last from early evening until the approach of midnight each New Year’s Eve. Sally Rogel from Rye Recreation was instrumental in putting the Macleods in touch with the entertainers, and the restaurants and stores opened their doors as venues. Patrick from Arcade Books performed with his band, and other local and regional talent signed on for one of the only events where they could bring their own families to work to ring in the new year together. In 2000, when First Night was in it’s fourth year, women in Rye made a quilt for City Hall to commemorate this wonderful event and to thank those in our town who worked tirelessly to make it happen.

This year, despite the great success of Rye Town Park’s Christmas Tree Lighting and the Rye Recreation bonfire last weekend, many of us stayed warm inside on December 1st, a wet, stormy Sunday afternoon that should have been Rye’s annual Mistletoe Magic event. Mistletoe Magic is run by the Chamber of Commerce and brings together the entire community for an afternoon of festive fun, with free activities sponsored by the members of the Chamber. This was the first year it has ever been canceled, and unfortunately it was at a big expense for Rye’s Chamber of Commerce. As Tony Coash, Board member and longtime Rye resident explained, the entire event is run and sponsored by the Chamber and everything is free to visitors, with the exception of a cup of chili from the Chili Contest. Local restaurants enter into this contest and the proceeds from chili sales go directly to the Chamber of Commerce Scholarship, awarded to two high school students each year who work in local businesses. While the unused hotdogs and hot chocolate were generously donated to Rye Rec and Rye Town Park for their events the following weekend, Mistletoe Magic was a loss for our community, and we encourage you to keep this in mind as shop local this year.

Speaking of new traditions, why not do some holiday shopping in town tonight or tomorrow, at our local stores and the Rye Artisan Market at the Square House? Meet a friend for lunch and brainstorm new ideas to brighten our winter! We are fortunate to live in a community full of dedicated people who have found creative and inclusive ways to bring the holiday season to life. Who knows what traditions the future may hold?

The Rye Artisan Market is open Thursday, December 12 from 6-9pm and Friday, December 13 from 11am-5pm. Purchase Street stores are open every day through the holiday season.

For more about First Night in Rye, check out this article in the New York Times:

In Rye, Debut of First Night Events

’Tis the Season: Holiday Traditions in Rye