2022 Christmas Meeting Highlights

Location: Banbury Center
Date: Sunday December 4, 2022

After nearly a 3-year absence from having in-person meetings (Zoom meetings are just not the same, are they?), our club finally got together and hosted a Christmas meeting.  As soon as you walked into the club house, familiar faces came rushing to meet you, hug you, chat with you … as if we could just pick up the conversation where we left it last and continued forward, as if that gap in time due to a global pandemic was just a blip that certainly proved “absence makes the heart grow fonder”.  We still had Sue and Peggy manning the membership table, Don and Bill taking charge of the prize table and many others setting up displays at the tables.  Yes unfortunately, we did lose a few members due to the natural order of life along the way; but for many of us in the club house that day, we definitely enjoyed every bit of moment we spent together sharing the common interests of our little porcelain houses and figurines .

1. Christmas pot-luck
   • We started the meeting with a bang with our traditional Christmas pot-luck lunch.   As expected, lots of delicious food and goodies to share and enjoy.  Don’t think anyone went home hungry. 
2. “Vintage Christmas” vignette display
   • To get our creative display “juice” flowing, everyone was encouraged to bring a small display using older Department 56 pieces … “older” as in the item had been discontinued in production years ago or was recently retired by Department 56 the company.
   • as you can see from the photographs below, a short time away did not strip away our members’ creative display ideas.
3. Gift Exchange 
   • As for the fun activity in this meeting, we asked each member to bring a consumable item for gift exchange with fellow members in a game of “white elephant” where each person picked a number and took turns choosing a gift from the pile - or “stealing” from an earlier participant who’s already picked - until everyone had a present.
   • The whole process got hilarious fast when people started “stealing” and everyone got excited at the end to find out what gift he/she ended up with.  Looks like Marlene got picked on during the game as she had to re-pick her gifts a few times!