The History Column
A Cape May Christmas parade from the 1950s featuring a fire truck which is currently owned by local firefighter, Jeff Laag. Courtesy of George Rea, Sr
Yule Cape May — keeping it festive cape may’s first organized city christmas celebration happened in 1921, when a community tree was erected in front of the high school, now City Hall, on Christmas Eve. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, “It was a blaze of multi-colored lights.” Presents were then handed out to local children from impoverished households by members of the Progressive League. The next day, before dawn, each of the local church choirs walked through the streets with students from the high school, singing carols. The following year and each year after, Cape May continued to put up a municipal tree and hold a lighting ceremony. The only exceptions came from 1942 to 1944, during World War Two. Because the city was in a coastal “dim-out” area, designated by the New Jersey Office of Civilian Defense, the city was required to keep the tree unlit. Although the church choirs no longer sing carols in the street on Christmas morning, there are plentiful concerts all over the city. The community Christmas tree now stands in Rotary Park and the lights are switched on much earlier in the season — this year, the offi-
cial lighting will be held on December 2. These days, one of the biggest holiday events on the calendar is the iconic West Cape May Christmas Parade, though it was preceded by the Greater Cape May Christmas Parade, which began in 1957 and continued until it was canceled, due to rain, in 1965. The first West Cape May Christmas Parade in 1965 brought the community much more than holiday cheer. As future Parade Lady Charlotte Daily led the inaugural parade down Broadway, borough commissioners realized the street was not adequately lit. By August of the following year, 26 new mercury vapor street lights had been added. The idea of Cape May creating a Victorian-themed Christmas tourist season was hatched in 1980 as a way for the owners of a B&B to make their mortgage payment. Sue Carroll, who formerly ran the famous Mainstay Inn with husband Tom, once told me that Dane and Joan Wells “single-handedly started the Christmas season in Cape May.” After speaking with the Wells, former owners of the Queen Victoria B&B, I learned that Sue was right! Joan Wells explained, “We were crazy enough to have the idea we would be open year-round in what we discovered was a very seasonal town. But then those mortgage payexit zero
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holidays
2016
By Ben Miller ments hung over us. We had seen what Victorian Weekend did to extend the season from Labor Day into mid-October, so we looked at the calendar to see what we could do to pull it along another few weeks, and we saw Christmas, which was a very Victorian holiday.” Dane and Joan decided to draw customers in by creating specially themed weekends in December. The first was dedicated to making and hanging decorations, the second was devoted to the classic Dickens tale A Christmas Carol, while the third weekend involved traditional Victorian caroling. Their idea wasn’t a big hit... at first. Fate entered the picture when Ronan O’Casey came to the Mainstay along with his wife to help with putting up the decorations that first year. As it turned out, Ronan wasn’t much of a handyman, but he was an actor, and he chose to entertain everyone after dinner by reading a selection from A Christmas Carol. “He had only intended to read a bit from the book,” according to Joan, “but he was so entertaining we prevailed on him to keep on until he completed the story. The guests remained spellbound until the very end.” As luck would have it, one of the other individuals there worked for a a popular national magazine — in that moment, a tradition was born. The following week, a photographer and a writer from the magazine showed up to profile the Queen Victoria’s Christmas fun. There’re weren’t many customers that first year — about 40 people — but word spread and the seeds had been planted. The following Christmas, it was a different story, with 400 customers attending a special house tour that was added to the festivities. As Dane remembers it, “The following year we got together with three other inns and decided to make it a group tour. The Queen Victoria did the history of Victorian Christmas, the Captain Mey’s Inn did a Dutch Christmas, the Brass Bed Inn did a children’s Christmas with a formidable collection of old toys, and Alexander’s followed with a food theme.” Year by year, the numbers increased and now, Cape May is alive and vibrant during the Christmas season, with Congress Hall’s Winter Wonderland giving visitors yet another compelling reason to celebrate the holidays in America’s Original Seaside Resort.