“carols by candlelight"

7/24/2019 Carols by Candlelight"

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(John U. Rees, 2015)

This year marks the 74th anniversary of the annual Wrightstown Friends Meeting Carol Sing, an

event I remember over the years differently as I aged (I first attended as an infant 1957 or 58). And

for a long time memory was the only way to revisit past carol sings. That changed to some degree

when some years ago my mother, Virginia Dolli Rees, was given a postcard by a friend, Esther

Neeld, who with her husband Harry, ran Neelds Store and Post Office in Wrightstown. The image

on the card was a painting done in 1956 by Ben Eisenstat, originally published with a small article

in the December 1956 Ford Times Magazine. For some years the text of that piece has been included

with the printed carols handed out at the Carol Sing, but I had never seen Mr. Eisenstats painting

until shown the postcard a few years ago. The image is included below; here then is the

accompanying narrative, as printed in the Carol Sing handout:

Carols by Candlelight

by Ernestine Ingerman

paintings by Ben Eisenstat

Fifteen years ago [1941], the handful of Quakers in Wrightstown, Pennsylvania, who decided to

decorate their modest meeting house with candles and invite their neighbors in for carols theSunday before Christmas, couldnt have known they were founding a tradition.At first it was only a small gathering of the devout, but in the few intervening years, despite

snowstorms and icy roads, it has become an important event in this small Bucks County hamlet. As

many as three hundred people now crowd the small building to sit beneath the candles and sing old

carols.

With two hundred candles flickering in their holders and more and more people coming to the

annual event, some of the older Friends felt a concern about the fire hazard. So the [Lingohocken]

fire company from nearby Wycombe was asked to send an engine over to stand by. They have


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done so for the past ten years. The six firemen sit in the back row and join in the singing, and

outside, sometimes under a mantle of snow, is their red truck.

In the customary manner of Friends, a few minutes of devotional silence precedes the singing of

twenty-five of the best loved carols. The singers range from white-haired grandmothers to wide-

eyed tots. A feeling of warmth and love pervades the meeting house.

For the many who come from a dozen miles around, this night in Wrightstown is the real beginning

of the Christmas season.

Fragments of a Quaker Carol Sing

1.

My Grandmother forgot to seal

the Pollyanna envelope

and the names fell out.

Her hair has thinned since August, like a shabby sofa,

much-loved, strained, barely there,

cross-hatched behind her ear, skin youthful.

Ive only ever known her black hair.

Its grey now, a sheet of mute rain.

2.

An ancient woman in back

laughs at the silence of the meetinghouse.

A toddler asks Mommyover and over,

hes sitting on her knee.

Candles burn warped glass windows,

dead mens candles.

Above, a cold bone moon trepans

the wolf-hair sky.

I am warm. My grandmother is warm.

We are alive with the faces of ancestors,

ours and others.


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3.

A great-uncle presses his nose

to a windowpane; a candle flame

swallows his right eye.

His hair is damp with snow water.

He sings Low, How A Rose Eer Blooming, his mothers eveningsong.

We sing beside him,

our fervent faith in life loud

with the voices of the dead

who know the answers

better than the mystery.

4.

Snow fingerprints the lots

westward facing fire truck.

Its waited since 1945

for a Christmas blaze, the headlines to follow.

This house hasnt burned yet.

Instead each December, this night

is cold and peaceful.

My grandmother raises her hand,

as if she is shape singing,

measures each breath, weighs each word,each rafter, floorboard, hard bench.

She is protected by the dead, and

some watchers you never question.

We leave greeting footfalls, voices

lifting old faces from dark windows.

The silence of our song

is as much a wilderness

as the churchyard outside,

its snow and stones and spalt oaks.(Christian Rees)


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A Ford Times magazine dated December 1956 Vol 48 NO 12. This is a monthly magazine put out by

Ford Motor Co, copyright Ford Motor Company Dearborn Michigan.
http://www.cocomilkcollectibles.com/shoppingcart/car-magazines-c-7/1956-ford-times-magazine-december-p-56


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Background material:Published on: 10/4/2009 Last Visited: 10/4/2009

Benjamin Eisenstat Newman Galleries

...

Ben Eisenstat, Professor Emeritus of the Philadelphia College of Art, received national recognition

for his depictions of Philadelphia historic landmarks and for his landscape paintings.Born inPhiladelphia in 1915, he studied at the Graphic Sketch Club (now the Fleisher Art Memorial), the

Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and at the Barnes Foundation.

In addition to having over 30 one-man shows, Eisenstat exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum,

American Watercolor Society, National Academy of Design, Chicago Art Institute, Cleveland

Museum, Detroit Institute of Art, Pennsylvania Academy Of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia Museum of

Art, and the Springfield Museum.

In 1975, the Philadelphia Inquirer described his works as songs sung to the buildings of downtown

Philadelphia, for which Eisenstat obviously has great fondness.,

He received the Harrison Morris Watercolor Prize from the Pennsylvania Academy (3 times); the

Thornton Oakley Prize and the Annual Medal of Achievement, both from the Philadelphia

Watercolor Society, Philadelphia Watercolor Club; First Prize, Philadelphia Art Director,s Annual;

and the Frances Sayer Purchase Prize.

Eisenstat was a member of the American Watercolor Society, Philadelphia Watercolor Club,

Fellowship of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Artists Equity, and the Philadelphia Art

Alliance.He taught at the Philadelphia College of Art for over 30 years as a Professor and Co-

Chairman of the Illustration Department.

Eisenstat received commissions from the Provident Mutual Life Insurance Company, First Bank of

New Jersey, Burlington County Trust Company, Ford Motor Company, Squibb Inc., among many

others.

He illustrated and written articles for the New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, Saturday Review

of Literature, Hearst Publications, and the Christian Science Monitor.

His paintings are in the collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Fleisher Art Memorial, the

United States Maritime Commission, Woodmere Art Museum, Jefferson Hospital, and the Industrial

Valley Bank.

__________________________

As a sidenote, one important aspect I fondly recall cannot be seen in these small watercolors; for

years as I grew from a child into my early twenties, Solebury Township resident Margaret MaggieRoot, a former actress, presented the Biblical Christmas story in her resonant amazing stage voice.To this day I still hear her voice, no matter who presents it.


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Margaret Mullen Root

Interviewee: Margaret Mullen Root

Date of birth/age at interview: August 28, 1910/about 77

Interviewer: Joan Stack

Interview date: about 1987

Interview location: Contis Cross Keys Restaurant

Interview length:26 minutesTime span discussed: 1926 to 1987

Time markers:

00:00 introduction; Maggie as actress Margaret Mullen, 20 shows Maggie worked in starting in

1926, Dead End, Room Service, Three Men and a Horse, State of the Union;

03:49 being fired fromTime of Your Life,William Saroyan

07:05 advertisement

08:52 met John Root, set designer, on set of Red Harvest,married 6 weeks later in Doylestown;

came to Bucks County often; wedding breakfast at the Cuttalossa Inn

15:38 married in 1937, about to celebrate 50th anniversary

16:00 moved to Bucks County after children born; John kept working in New York, evolved into a

designer of old barns as homes

17:45 kept two homes; acted every season 1947 to 1969 at Bucks County Playhouse

19:19 poetry readings to high school students

22:24 reading for Delaware Music Club

24:40 advertisement

25:35 final comments and thanks

http://soleburyhistory.org/margaret-mullen-root/

Margaret Mullen Root

Stage & Screen ArtistBorn August 28, 1910, Arlington, Massachusetts

Died January 5, 2003, Solebury, Pennsylvania (Chandler Hall, Newtown, PA)

At the age of 16, Margaret Mullen was pulled from her high school history class to begin her

professional stage career in the English melodrama The Ghost Train, when she was asked to go as

the female lead, a role she was understudying. She played the role for three months. She then

toured with William Hodge's Road Company for 3 years. She appeared on Broadway in seven

George Abbott comedies including Ladies' Money, Three Men on a Horse, and Room Service. She

took on a more serious role as Kay in Sidney Kingsley's celebrated hit Dead End (1935-36). In 1937

she opened in the Broadway production of Red Harvest and met set designer John Root. On their

days off they escaped to Bucks County and soon fell in love with each other and the area. Margaret

Mullen Root continued her acting career at the Bucks County Playhouse in New Hope where she

appeared in virtually every season and many acclaimed productions from 1947 to 1969. Shereturned to Broadway in 1965 to appear in Anya. She considered her role in Frank D. Gilroy's The

Subject Was Roses (1967), a Bucks County Playhouse production which was staged at the Bucks

County Prison as entertainment for the inmates, her most fulfilling and gratifying appearance of her

long career.

https://www.michenerartmuseum.org/bucksartists/artist/188/
http://soleburyhistory.org/margaret-mullen-root/http://soleburyhistory.org/margaret-mullen-root/https://www.michenerartmuseum.org/bucksartists/artist/188/https://www.michenerartmuseum.org/bucksartists/artist/188/https://www.michenerartmuseum.org/bucksartists/artist/188/http://soleburyhistory.org/margaret-mullen-root/

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