The Winterberry Christmas Cottage” Creator Seeks Peace on Earth.
“I just want everyone to believe in the magic,” Says Amy Edler. I’ve determined that the “magic” she envisions is nothing short of the possibility of world peace! What is surprising is how she is going about it.
With the pummeling people have been dealt lately, it might be tempting to think the whole world is in a woebegone state, but I’m here to report that Christmas spirit is alive and well! If you have any doubt, go to the Winterberry Christmas Cottage Facebook page, which – at this writing – has a membership of 254K!
Just a few seconds of viewing this page will tickle your tinsel and tamp down your blood pressure. From all over the world, members of the page contribute beautiful photos of holiday lights, ornaments, decorated trees, wreaths, greenery-bedecked staircases, doors and porches. But wait! There’s more! Animated twinkling stars, snowscapes and soul-centering holiday thoughts invite you take a restorative pause in your day. Holiday recipes, riddles and rhymes will delight and inspire viewers any hour of the day; any day of the year. Although content is welcomed from others, Edler is the chief creator, contributor to and sole monitor the heart-warming page.
I believe Christmas spirit transcends all sorts of boundaries and has power to connect people and create more peace in the world, so I was drawn to the page when I stumbled across it via a simple Facebook search of “Christmas.” One quick perusal of this sparkling snow globe of a page transported me to a peaceful, joy-filled sanctuary where people of different ages, races, political stripes and religions come together in a common spirit of peace, love and hope that the Christmas season arouses.
Suspecting that I had found a kindred spirit in Amy Edler, I reached out to her to learn more about Winterberry Christmas Cottage. We sat down to a phone interview and quickly agreed that we are, unsurprisingly, “Sisters in Christmas.”
I wondered what was behind the name, “Winterberry Christmas Cottage.” Amy refers to the Winterberry design found on dishes and serving ware. “It’s so beautiful. I just love it,” she gushes. She was also inspired by an artist’s Christmas Cottage. She put the two together and liked the sound of it. “People often ask me if they can come visit Winterberry Christmas Cottage,” Edler laughs. “There is no Winterberry Christmas Cottage!” Well, no physical cottage, anyway. But, the feeling the page enkindles is just as real as if there were.
The impetus to create the page came three years ago. "My son was twelve and wasn’t believing in Santa Claus anymore. He knew how much I love Christmas, and I wanted to show him that other people also believe in the magic of Christmas.” Edler not only wanted to help her son have more spirit, but to spread Christmas love around the world. “I think the world needs it,” she says with a refreshing lack of adornment. (I agree!)
I ask Amy what instilled such a passionate love of Christmas in her. She paints a picture of her childhood traditions, in which her family could have been Norman Rockwell’s models for the cover of a Saturday Evening Post magazine; presents on Christmas mornings, huge Christmas dinners at her grandparents’ house with the aunts, uncles and cousins coming together in a joyful cacophony! “As soon as you walked through the door, the smells would hit you,” Edler remembers fondly. “Ham, cakes and my grandfather’s Old Spice cologne.” It was a small house cradling what Edler remembers as a hundred people. “But, no one fought.”
They would celebrate for hours, and all of the family knew that the space under the Christmas tree was the spot reserved for little Amy to fall asleep in. As she lay there, looking up at the beauty of the decorated boughs, she took in the sights, sounds, smells and feels of the annual joyful event and etched them onto her heart. Perhaps the sweetest memory of all is that of her father pulling her out from under that tree, picking her up and bringing her home to her bed in their small, rural Ohio town. “There was always snow back then…” she says, wistfully.
Among Amy’s treasured possessions is the big, plastic Santa face that her grandmother had playfully placed on the front door to greet them, every Christmas day, for the beloved annual feast.
Her grandparents have since passed the torch to Amy. “And how do you celebrate these days,” I ask. “By going overboard,” she blurts out with a laugh! Because of her epically decorated house and yard, she is known, in her neighborhood, as “The Holiday Lady,” or – a moniker we share – “Mrs. Christmas.” From before Thanksgiving week, Amy’s house boasts no less than five Christmas trees! “I just want to try to bring back the feeling of love that I had at Christmastime. I want everybody to believe in the magic. There is a feeling at Christmas. It’s hard to put it in words.”
“Oh yes, Amy,” I say. “I hear you! There is a palpable spirit of the season that transcends all sorts of boundaries!” Like The Broadway Carolers, Amy is all about bringing a wide diversity of people together through the spirit of Christmas. “If you look at the people on my page,” she says, her energy rising, “they’re from all around the world; different races, different colors, different religions. That’s why I don’t allow overly religious comments on the page.” Amy states with a confidence I find refreshing.
We discuss what a tricky topic this can be. “As Christians,” she ponders, “we are not supposed to judge others.” And yet, Amy and I have both found that many a well-meaning Christian has repelled others from the Christmas experience by being exclusively demanding about the terms of celebrating the holiday, essentially erecting a “Keep Out” sign, instead of rolling out the welcome mat of a non-threatening peek into the very reasons we cherish the season. We believe that the “reason” for that season should be something that draws people in, not drives them away from what we know can be a life-giving, inclusive festival of peace. Instead, many, who come from other traditions, bristle at the name of Christmas, because of the attitudes they witness too often in December.
Amy recognizes that Christmas has the power to bring people together, but that attention must be paid to the expression of it. To that end, Amy has shown great fortitude in tending to the Winterberry Christmas Cottage, and her two spin-off pages, Winterberry Christmas Treats and Winterberry Autumn Treats, (both of which also have impressive member counts. Check them out!) A typical day in the life of Amy Edler begins at 5am. After taking care of her dog and tending to her family, she fires up Facebook, and spends half of the day working on the page. “What work is there to do, besides posting pretty pictures,” you may be wondering?
Plenty!
First, she checks the new member requests. These days, there are about 2,000 every day! Astonishingly, it only takes Amy about 45 minutes to go through them. “I’m a speed reader,” she reveals with nonchalance. After three years of weeding through membership requests, she is able to quickly suss out the grinches. Then she has to tend to any issues that might have been reported to Facebook by a member of the page. Edler spends hours, every day, deleting mean comments, bouncing out spammers, scammers, trolls, haters, perverts and serial daters. The political climate, rising hate and widening gap between groups of people doesn’t help. Some people make mean comments or try to tell her how to run her page.
“People think I get paid to run this page. I don’t,” Amy says with an exhausted exhale. Although the mental and spiritual wellbeing she provides to hundreds of thousands of people is certainly a valuable service, this has been her uncompensated contribution to world peace. Being on the front lines of peace and joy in this plugged-in world would put the jolly of any Christmas elf on the chopping block, but Edler focusses on the daily successes; the people who post beautiful photos or sentiments, the friendly greetings she receives, the posts that resonate widely enough to generate hundreds of comments, and seeing people care about each other even though they are strangers.
Many of the members may be coming around to realizing the many facets of hard work Amy puts into this page. Earlier this year, Edler found herself discouraged by the increasing inhumanity she saw evidenced in the overwhelming monitoring and bouncing she had to do on the very page she created to increase love in the world. In February, she made an announcement that she was taking a break, and she left the page alone until Christmas in July. She had some weeding to do when she returned, but she noticed a kinder tone on the page. It seems people missed Mrs. Christmas and her homey touch. Perhaps they realized how much they enjoyed her frequent posts, and the seasonal photos she edited, with care, to make more beautiful. Whatever shift took place, when she returned, the membership requests shot up exponentially and have been increasing ever since!
I asked Amy how she would define success for this page. “A million members.”
“And the outcome of that –” I ask. “What, could happen then?”
“I want a million people to spread love, peace and joy all through the world. I think it would have a chain reaction.”
Yes, Sister! I believe that chain reaction has already begun!
And you have shown your son that, yes, “there is a Santa Claus,” as the editor of the Chicago Sun responded to Virginia. “He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy.”
