Dean Mazzarella

Baby’s 1st Christmas

her father’s favorite

LEOMINSTER — Mayor Dean Mazzarella said it’s tough to pinpoint his most treasured Christmas memory; there are so many to choose from.

But after a moment of reflection, he realized his favorite Christmas was his first as a father.

Mazzarella’s daughter Stephanie, now 28, was born in April 1982. by Christmastime she was crawling around, to her father’s delight.

“It’s a whole new thing,” Mazzarella said. “You’re a parent. You’re responsible for somebody and you realize what a gift; you brought another human being into the world.”

Christmas continues to be Mazzarella’s favorite holiday, far and away, but none quite compare to a baby’s (and father’s) first Christmas.

Louis Charpentier

Playing Santa Claus

brought siblings joy

LEOMINSTER — Louis Charpentier was mr. Christmas long before Mayor Dean Mazzarella bestowed the title upon him in 2001.

Charpentier, who turned 100 this month, said his fondest memory looking back on Christmases shared with 12 brothers and sisters, is putting on his Santa Claus helper costume every year and handing out presents to his siblings, starting with the youngest.

“My sister had made me a suit, and I bought a mask with a beard. I always enjoyed it,” Charpentier said.

Somehow, Charpentier’s brothers and sisters decided he was the best one for the job when he was 16, and he really took to it.

Charpentier continued the Santa’s helper tradition until four years ago, handing presents out to his grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

“We’d go over to my son’s house, and everyone would bring their gifts and put them under the tree, and then I would dish them out,” Charpentier said.

Chris Orareo

A red go-cart

under the tree

LEOMINSTER — as a child, Leominster School Committee member Chris Orareo was usually the first one out of bed on Christmas mornings, rousting his parents and younger sister to see what Santa Claus brought them.

“It was one of those mad dashes at 5:30 to wake up mom and dad,” he said.

The best Christmas present ever was the red go-cart he got as a 9-year-old, Orareo said.

“It was sitting in the living room, and walking down the stairs and there it was,” he said. “I’ll always remember that.”

His favorite memories, though, are the family traditions on Christmas day.

Much of the extended family was still in Sicily so Orareo would spend the day with his parents and sister and have the Christmas dinner.

Then his parents friends would visit during the evening.

“As you get older you miss those, but with your children and grandchildren you reminisce with them,” Orareo said.

Robert Sideleau Jr.

A special gift that’s

lasted for 29 years

LEOMINSTER — Robert Sideleau Jr., acting chief of the Leominster Fire Department, said his favorite Christmas memory is “a little goofy.”

“It was when I found out I was going to be on the Fire Department. it was Christmas Eve, 29 years ago,” Sideleau said.

The year was 1981. Sideleau was enjoying Christmas Eve dinner at a local restaurant, when former Mayor Raymond Harper walked up to him and handed him a letter informing him he was to be appointed as a Leominster firefighter.

Proposition 2 1/2 had recently passed, causing Massachusetts cities and towns to cut their budgets. Several firefighters had lost their jobs, and were rehired that month. A couple of new men, including Sideleau, were also brought on the force.

“I was really excited. I tried hard to get on the department,” Sideleau said.

Wayne Nickel

Remembering

grandmother

Growing up, City Council President Wayne Nickel had a close relationship with his grandmother, Fanny Palmer.

“I was an only child, so my grandmother was pretty special to me,” Nickel said.

Nickel’s grandmother lived with him since the day he was born, making for many happy Christmases together. But as she grew older, Fanny wasn’t able to leave the house as often, and had trouble making it to Christmas Eve church services with the family.

On one of her last Christmases, Fanny made the extra effort to attend. Nickel said he was about 10 years old at the time. That evening became his most treasured Christmas memory.

“I can remember being at the services, and being really glad she was there with me,” Nickel said.

Kevin Roy

Selling trees, seeing

lights on Main St.

FITCHBURG — Fire Chief Kevin Roy recalls selling Christmas trees to local residents during the holiday season with his brothers and cousins.

“My uncle sold Christmas trees for more than 30 years, so as a teenager I’d help sell the trees,” Roy said. “One year, I even went with my uncle to Canada to get the trees and bring them back to his business on John Fitch Highway. … it was a lot of fun and a great way to meet a lot of people.”

As a younger child, Roy remembers driving up and down Main Street with his parents to look in awe at the decorative lights and holly hung along the buildings.

“Growing up in Fitchburg, it always stuck out in my mind as the big thing to do,” Roy said. “They use to string lights and green holly from building to building all the way down Main Street, and some years they even did it on Water Street and in the Cleghorn neighborhood.”

But most importantly, Christmas was a time for Roy’s family to get together and celebrate.

Ken Jones

A parade downtown

with a special guest

FITCHBURG — Fitchburg Veterans Agent Ken Jones has called Fitchburg his home his entire life. And at 60 years old, he said his most treasured Christmas memory comes from when he was 6.

“It’s a unique Christmas memory. Right after Thanksgiving, they always had a Christmas parade and the Christmas parade started in Depot Square. It’s about where Montuori Tires is. That was the old depot,” he remembers.

Jones said that a very special guest always opened the parade.

“Santa Claus used to come. there was a clock steeple. Santa Claus would come out of the steeple, down a hook and ladder. He’d greet all the children and that would start the Christmas parade,” Jones said.

To Jones, seeing Santa was magical.

“I remember Santa Claus coming magically out of the steeple. We don’t know how he got there. Where did Santa Claus come from?” he said.

Ryan McNutt

A time for family,

special breakfast

FITCHBURG — Christmas was a time for the family to come together, said Ryan McNutt, recalling his childhood memories of the holiday season.

“I remember opening up gifts as fast I could, and moving on to the next gift. there would be wrapping paper everywhere,” said McNutt, chief of staff to Mayor Lisa Wong. “It’s funny though, I don’t remember any of the gifts. what I do remember is the family atmosphere. I think about taking the tour of both grandparents houses and everyone in my family being there.

“My dad was always on the road for his job, so it was the one day that the entire family would get together,” McNutt added.

Before taking the traditional tour to both grandparents, McNutt said he would wake up around 7:30 a.m., nag his parents to wake up and head downstairs to open Christmas presents.

“My mom would always make a special Christmas breakfast too,” said the lifelong Fitchburg resident.

Ernie Sund

Christmas trees

and palm trees

LUNENBURG — Boston Common was a magical place for a young boy walking with his parents and grandparents during the Christmas season, but the sunny tropic scene of Hawaii has remained just as vivid and pleasant through the decades, said Lunenburg Selectman Ernie Sund.

“Christmas in Hawaii is probably a really nice memory,” he said.

Sund was in his 20s when the Air Force stationed him in Hawaii to work on the mechanics of cargo planes, and on John F. Kennedy’s Air Force One once, from 1961-1965.

“I was in the military at the time and it was so strange to have Christmas trees and palm trees and walking on the beach,” he said. “When you grow up in the Northeast and you are used to snow, especially at Christmastime, and you go over there and you say, ‘Oh my goodness.’”

Paula Bertram

Picture-postcard

week in Maine

LUNENBURG — Board of Selectmen Chairman Paula Bertram’s favorite Christmas sounds a little like a Bing Crosby movie.

Her family has a camp in Hiram, Maine, and about 20 years ago her extended family and friends spent Christmas week there.

“It was a very old-fashioned Christmas, we went out to the woods, cut down a tree, strung popcorn. it was a very quiet relaxing Christmas,” she said.

There were no cell phones or cable television so they spent time tobogganing on a mountain and drinking hot chocolate.

They assembled puzzles and played Scrabble or watched children ice skating.

Pictures taken during that Christmas are some of her most prized possessions, now that her children and her friends’ children are grown, Bertram said.

“It was really about family and friends and spending time together,” she said. “It’s something I haven’t been able to capture again.”

Robert DeMoura

Food, family —

and little stress

FITCHBURG — Police Chief Robert DeMoura recalls the stress-free, jovial holidays he experienced as a young child.

“When I think of Christmas as a kid, I remember the entire family getting together, opening up tons of little gifts, always having enough to eat and being completely happy,” DeMoura said, as he reflected on his childhood holiday memories. “The important part to me is that everything was stress free. Now as a parent, I want to make sure my children’s Christmas is as stressless as possible, so they always remember it as a positive experience like I do.”

DeMoura remembers staying local, and not traveling like many families he knew.

“We never had to travel for Christmas because our family is all local, which I thought was great as a child,” he said. “It was nice to get together with the family, eat and be happy.”

Kerry Speidel

The real Santa

on a real sleigh

LUNENBURG — This was no impostor. he was the real deal.

Town Manager Kerry Speidel remembers the time she saw the real Santa Claus at Christmastime.

“When I was 7 years old I saw the real Santa Claus,” Speidel said. “That is my favorite memory.”

It was in Gardner, where she lived until she was about 10 years old.

She and her younger brother, Bob Bowse, were walking with a buddy down a street at the end of a snowstorm when the jolly old elf came up the road wearing a red suit and riding in a sleigh.

“I don’t know where he was going but he looked exactly how Santa would look, he looked like Santa,” Speidel said.

It was the mid-1970s, and to this day she enthusiastically insists with a laugh that it was the real Santa.

She remembers sitting on a department-store Santa’s lap and said the man riding up the road was not the same guy.

Daniel Asquino

Joyous chaos,

wished granted

GARDNER — The hours leading up to Christmas morning during childhood were restless for Daniel Asquino, president of Mount Wachusett Community College.

Asquino and his five siblings were allowed to open one gift on Christmas Eve before trying to sleep through the night to get to Christmas morning for the remaining gifts from his parents and Santa Claus.

“I remember my family coming together to get ready for Christmas and mom and dad scurrying around to make certain that all six children received the gift they wanted,” Asquino said.

He remembers the chaos and joy of running to and opening his gifts Christmas morning.

“How my mom and dad ever did what they did with very limited income is an example of the love and caring that today remains with me each and every day,” Asquino said.

Stephen DiNatale

Grandma’s cooking

after ice skating

FITCHBURG — as a young boy, Rep. Stephen DiNatale, D-Fitchburg, remembers tightly lacing up a pair of ice skates and skating on the local pond with the neighborhood crew.

“All the neighborhood kids would be out there skating,” said DiNatale, as he reminisced about his childhood holiday memories. “There’d be at least 12 to 15 kids and we’d stay out there until it got dark. Then when I got home, I’d have to go through the cellar, and my grandmother would be cooking in a mini kitchen in the cellar.

“I can remember the smell of the food she was cooking up for dinner, such as meatballs and spareribs.” he added. “That’s one of the memories I hold dear to me when I think back on the wintry holiday season as a child.”

David Berry

Best yet to come

for new granddad

SHIRLEY — for David Berry, learning he had been selected to fill the Town of Shirley’s Chief Administrator Position earlier this month was bound to be a Christmas memory to remember.

But the Lexington resident — who has been working as an assistant director for a redevelopment board in Arlington — got some more news that would make for an even bigger memory, shortly after it was announced that he was the Board of Selectmen’s choice for the job.

His only son, Nathaniel, had just welcomed his first son, Vincent, into the world.

“It’s got to be this one, I just had my first grandson,” he said. “We’ll be doing our first Christmas with our first grandson.”

Maggie Whitney

Christmas classic

kicks off season

ASHBURNHAM — Selectman Maggie Whitney said her favorite Christmas moment is sitting down with her family and watching “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.”

“Each time we watch it we find something else funny,” she said.

The Whitney family watches the Christmas classic starring Chevy Chase on Thanksgiving Day. since they first started watching the movie, her family has grown a bit.

“It was the kids and now it’s the grandkids, too,” she said.

Whitney feels like the movie helps to bring the family closer together.

“Christmas, to me, is being with my family, and that’s the best present to have,” Whitney said.

Whitney also said she has fond memories of when her father was the first Santa Claus in the Ashburnham Christmas parade.

“My father loved it,” she said. “He loved it.”

Dave Uminski

Mt. Wachusett calls

on Christmas Eve

ASHBURNHAM — “My family and I started a little tradition a couple years ago where we head up to Mount Wachusett on Christmas Eve,” said Dave Uminski, principal of Oakmont Regional High School.

It’s nothing too interesting, but it’s a good way for his family to be together, he said.

“As anyone with young kids would attest, you’re going in many, many different directions during the year,” Uminski said. Skiing with his family during the holidays is a way for them to come together.

His kids started skiing when they were young, but he and his wife didn’t go with them until more recently.

“My wife said to me one day, ‘You know something? We could do that,’” Uminski said.

So after 20 years off the mountain, he and his wife started skiing again. Now it has turned into a favorite tradition.

Lori Schippers

Away from family,

but with a family

ASHBY — for 24-year-old Ashby resident Lori Schippers, her whole world view changed as a result of her volunteer efforts in the Peace Corps in Africa.

Her most memorable Christmas memories are from her time abroad, she said.

“As for the Christmas memories, I can only think of the last two Christmases I had, both in Namibia, since they were so different from all my others. One of the best things though was being invited to family meals and parties in 2009 in Andara, Namibia,” she remembers.

Invitations aren’t issued in their culture, she said. Generally, she went on, you just showed up at someone’s house.

“It’s always hard to be away from family on holidays, so being invited to be part of another family, in a world away from my own, was a really powerful feeling,” she said.

While her world view may have changed, her heart still belongs with her family in Ashby.

“I have a new perspective on everything since coming home, but the importance of family has increased a million fold. you can always create a family when you’re away, but there’s just nothing like the family you grew up with,” she said.

Jim LeCuyer

The hunt began

with wind-up rabbit

TOWNSEND — Christmas memories can be made at any age.

Resident Jim LeCuyer, 59, said he was 8 years old and remembers waking up to find a treasured toy under the Christmas tree.

“Under the Christmas tree was a wind-up rabbit, and you would shoot it with a dart gun,” he remembers. “It was part of the family heritage and it was what I was used to at the time.”

He continued, “When I got that, it was one of the most exciting times.”

The Lunenburg native said going out hunting was something he did often with his father and grandfather, and that that gift got him started at a young age.

Locals share their favorite Christmas memories