Hotel Workers Bring a Decade of Christmas Magic
Witham Family Charitable Christmas brings joy, kindness, warmth, and toys to families in Bar Harbor and beyond
BAR HARBOR—Some of the 800 or so people on Saturday came with a plan.
“We’ve got to find the donuts. We’ve got to take a photo with Santa,” one mom told her family in the Candy Cane Lane hallway of the Atlantic Oceanside Hotel and Event Center Saturday morning.
Some of the 800 or so came with a need to make sure with the best in the beard business that their own beard was on point.
“Santa approved,” said Derrick Harrison, stroking his whiskers and giving his own happy Claus-like nod.
Some came to just experience a little holiday magic as they entered a space transformed from a hotel and event center into a winter wonderland. Twinkling white lights hung from rafters. Ornaments, a giant book, a massive snowglobe, and cookie making stations that would make the North Pole bakers jealous greeted visitors at the free event that grows in both joy levels and attendance levels every year.
This year, there were more people than ever before, according to Witham Family Hotels Human Resources Director Isabelle Legault.
“Our official count at the welcome booth is 760. With some people not checking in, we think the unofficial count is over 800 people,” she said Saturday evening.
Bar Harbor Inn General Manager Jeremy Dougherty said there were approximately 650 who attended in 2023, up from approximately 420 in 2022.
In the parking lot, a T-Rex named Lucy wore a crown of ornaments while people rushed to a giant Snoopy for a hug. The sounds of “A Very Special Christmas” piped through an audio system as staff drove golf carts and escorted visitors from the parking lot to the entrance where people could drop off a winter clothing item or unwrapped toy and then get a map of the activities.
Through a tunnel of lights, guests walked into a space where they could make holiday pinecone bird feeders, simmer pots, paint mugs, or create Frosty snow lanterns. Or, they could write letters for Santa who was waiting just downstairs with Mrs. Claus. Being a clever Claus, Santa had stationed himself downstairs near the North Pole Cookie Studio.
For the last ten years, there has been a certain kind of magic that happens in Bar Harbor when the staff of the Witham Family Hotels come together for no other reason than doing good.
“What other company does crafts?” Jeremy Dougherty, joked as he helped with parking outside.
For everyone in the company, the entire week has been about crafts and cooking and decorating for the event.
“People love it,” he said.
The Bar Harbor Inn’s chef and elves created 600 sugar cookies for the event. But it wasn’t just them. Everyone played a part making enough mac and cheese, tomato soup, hot cider, cheese crostinis, donuts, and short ribs to feed hundreds.
Planning started in June.
Charles de Lint once wrote, “I do believe in an everyday sort of magic — the inexplicable connectedness we sometimes experience with places, people, works of art and the like; the eerie appropriateness of moments of synchronicity; the whispered voice, the hidden presence, when we think we’re alone.”
Saturday’s event proved that magic doesn’t just happen when people are alone. It can happen when community members get together to celebrate, to hope, and to give and to appreciate those who are doing it for them and their family. That happens at the event with the litany of gasps and giggles and chuckles and thank yous and hugs.
But it happens beyond the event, too. On Facebook Saturday, the kudos and thanks started rolling in.
“My five grandchildren had a wonderful time. Each year this event has grown, and this year was by far the best ever. We are very thankful to the Witham family hotels for their charitable event. It has been a tradition to attend in our family,” Carrie Allen McKay wrote.
Special, they called it. Generous.
“Every part of the day was perfect. Kudos to all the amazing volunteers,” Bonnie Conary Murphy wrote.
Food booths, constructed just for the event, featured hot cocoa, soup, ribs, special mashed potatoes. Santa’s Petting Zoo featured the furry and feathered. Pony rides circled the tent right by the zoo. An old-fashioned sleigh was laid out for photo ops.
One girl practiced her line for Kris Kringle to the giggles of those gathered around her. “You don’t look a day over 1,000 Santa,” she laughed.
“Say it! Say it!” the kids around her encouraged.
Her eyebrows wiggled. “Maybe . . .”
“As a team, we were all very excited to host the tenth anniversary of the event,” David C. Witham, CEO of Witham Family Hotels said Saturday. “However, what I found most humbling was the fact that we had created something that was now part of many families’ holiday tradition, especially those families who otherwise would not have the opportunity to partake in such a celebration.”
Celebration is almost too mild a word to explain the joy that happened over and over again at the event as parents beamed down at babies in their arms. Kids burnt marshmallows into blackened coals triumphantly. Others squealed in delight as they saw their friends or saw the pony to ride or saw Santa or a duck or bunny to pet.
“My wife who was volunteering at the petting zoo area shared a comment made to her by a father in line that truly captures the spirit of giving and why this day is one of my favorites of the year,” Witham said. “To quote him speaking of his family, ‘Our mouths will all be sore at the end of the day from smiling so much.’”
Of all the muscles to be sore from overuse, that’s got to be one of the best.
“We are continually looking at ways to give back to the community, and at some point, someone planted a seed that this would be a great thing for the kids in the area, and we just simply ran with it from there,” said Witham last year. “It has succeeded beyond my wildest dreams in terms of the joy it has brought to so many of all ages, including our own staff.”
The maestro of joy, Legault is the backbone of the celebration and has been involved since the event first began.
“I remember attending the first celebration, just having started with the company, volunteering with my husband at the ‘Letters to Santa’ table,” she said last year. “Back then, the event was much smaller, and we were utilizing only some of the inside upstairs space of the event center at the Atlantic Oceanside.”
All the space is used now for crafting and photos and the Clauses, for a giant snow globe, a book, and just for places to cuddle a baby, hug a neighbor, or if you are under four, there are plenty of nooks to flop around and breathe and play.
“Now that I have young children of my own, the event is even more special,” Legault said.
To make it even better, it was the tenth celebration for the event, a decade of community fun and support that goes both ways. The company’s staff (and staff’s family and friends) creates the event. Families attend and bring donations.
“There is so much pride and gratitude wrapped up in this celebration. Every year, we push ourselves to make it more festive, more magical, and to create an experience that feels like a new discovery for everyone who attends,” Legault said. “This tenth edition was so inspiring, with many members of our amazing community reaching out, wanting to help, and spread the joy and magic. There is really nothing like the feeling of connecting, giving back, and coming together, especially during the holidays. It is what matters.”
It is what matters.
According to the Witham Family Hotels Charitable Christmas Facebook page, “We do ask, if you are able, that you bring a new, unwrapped toy to donate to Maine Seacoast Mission or a gently used warm winter coat for H.O.M.E. Inc.”
According to Dougherty, presents for local children are brought to Maine Seacoast Mission and dispersed to local charities so that kids can have presents for Christmas. There’s no official count yet about how many toys and coats that were collected.
“However, we have collected way more toys than we ever have for the Seacoast Mission and so many winter items for H.O.M.E. We believe it is about 250-300 items,” Legault said.
Planning for the event usually begins in June like it did this year, and it takes about 80 volunteers to pull off the celebration. Those volunteers were Witham Family Hotels employees and family members. Many worked on the event all week and braved the cold temperatures between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. Saturday.
“From the sense of community it inspires, the opportunity it affords us to help Seacoast Mission and H.O.M.E., and the joy it brings to all ages. As a company, we are fortunate to be able to support many local organizations, but there is truly something special about offering a tangible experience rather than simply writing a check,” Witham said last year.
“But,” he continued, “if I had to state what means the most to me, it is to see the joy and awe in the faces of those kids who otherwise would not get to experience the magic of Christmas due to their family’s financial situation. Of course, I want to see everyone from every demographic come together and truly enjoy themselves, but knowing we can give a truly special experience to those kids who otherwise may not get an opportunity like this is what drives me personally. I want to be there for these kids as long as I can.”
“I take heart when I spot a kid who just stops and simply looks out in complete wonder. You can see that something inside of them feels the magic. These moments in life seem to be harder to come by, but when they do it connects us all,” he said.
ABOUT WITHAM FAMILY HOTELS CHARITABLE FUND
Witham Family Hotels Charitable Fund was established in 2017 to carry on the philanthropic legacy of hotelier David J. Witham. The Fund is dedicated to supporting local and regional organizations who provide valuable charitable services to our community. Monetary support of the Fund is provided by Witham Family Hotels, a Maine hospitality company based in the Acadia National Park area.
All photos: Carrie Jones/Shaun Farrar/Bar Harbor Story
The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by Rick Osann Art.
Hello!
This is Carrie and Shaun, again. When we started the Bar Harbor Story, one of our major tenets was that we provide high quality, unbiased news for everyone, for free. Why would we want to do this? Because we believe that everyone, regardless of financial means, deserves to be as informed as they choose to be and not have to pay for that privilege.
Not only does the Bar Harbor Story, provide local news in a way that keeps you informed, but it, and us, also embraces and promotes community and the good that is within it.
We are working very hard to get the news out there—for free—for everyone. Most media isn’t local. Most media has paywalls and is inundated with advertisements. We don’t. We aren’t.
Richard Stengel writing in The Atlantic said, "Paywalls create a two-tiered system: credible, fact-based information for people who are willing to pay for it, and murkier, less-reliable information for everyone else. Simply put, paywalls get in the way of informing the public, which is the mission of journalism.”
As a news source that is owned and staffed by locals, we make every attempt to gather all of the facts for our readers, information that might not be part of the main story and/or information that may not be known even to our towns’ officials, but is still just as important, if not more important, to the story.
As we continue our journey towards expansion of coverage area and what topics we cover, we are once again asking for your help. We are not asking for anything money related this time, although we always greatly appreciate that, but we are asking you to help spread the word about the Bar Harbor Story.
If you feel that the Bar Harbor Story is doing the job of providing high quality, unbiased news, then we ask that you tell everyone that you know that has access to the internet, via any type of device, about us. You can tell them personally and they can do a web search for Bar Harbor Story or you can send them this web address barharborstory.substack.com and it will introduce them to the Bar Harbor Story and all they will have to do on their own is hit the “Subscribe” button at the bottom of any article.
Thank you for helping us allow people to know that they can have free access to the local news.
Carrie and Shaun
THANK YOU FOR SUPPORTING OUR COMMITMENT TO YOUR COMMUNITY
LINKS TO LEARN MORE
Witham Family Charitable Christmas
https://wfhcharitablefund.com/2017/01/charitable-christmas-celebration/
If you’d like to donate to help support us, you can, but no pressure! Just click here (about how you can give) or here (a direct link), which is the same as the button below.
If you’d like to sponsor the Bar Harbor Story, you can! Learn more here.
Kudos to the Witham family for this amazing gift to our community as well as this very detailed well presented article....This put a huge smile on my face and in my heart....