Dartmouth celebrates Christmas with fluters, crafts, tree lighting
Five-year-old Lauren Kochan sat on a hay bale at Alderbrook Farm. Inside a gold, star-shaped costume, she stayed cozy with hand warmers stuffed into all of her pockets.
“I have feet warmers, back warmers, body warmers, and hand warmers,” said Kochan’s sister Brooke, 8. Brooke wore a halo and wings, while Morgan Kochan, 7, dressed as the Virgin Mary. The three girls were part of a six-person group acting out the nativity scene.
Although the performance was missing key players this year — including someone to play the part of Joseph — the children sang Christmas tunes alongside carolers from Smith Neck Friends Meeting. Alderbrook fans and neighbors stopped by, despite the cold weather.
“We come to Alderbrook regularly and saw a sign,” said Heather Kaput, who browsed Christmas cookies alongside her husband Noah and their two daughters.
Lynne Gifford echoed the sentiment: “We come to Alderbrook all the time.”
Gifford had wandered to the neighboring 1871 Schoolhouse to check out the children’s festivities. She helped her eight-year-old daughter Sadie load a small branch with mixed bird seed and suet. Alongside the bird feeder crafts, children could also make wooden snowmen. Behind them, the Fall River Fipple Fluters played Christmas tunes on various sized recorders.
The festivities in Russells Mills Village were only part of the Christmas celebrations held in town on December 11. On Slocum Road, families gathered in their ugliest sweaters at Dartmouth Middle School for games, ice cream, and face painting.
Anderson Gil, 11, donned a smiley face and ornaments on his red pullover.
“I thought about the design, and she made it,” he said, turning toward his mother Carla Gil.
“It makes noise,” added Carla, pushing on the smiley face to demonstrate its squeaking abilities.
Elsewhere in the middle school cafeteria, five-year-old Taylor Staples — who wants a Barbie house and/ or doll for Christmas — loaded Nerd candies onto her ice-cream sundae; Mason Gouveia, 5, — who wants a remote controlled car — worked on a crafts; and Santa greeted guests such as Nathan Melo, 9, and Hunter Augusto, 9.
“It’s so much fun to see the kids,” said Select Board Chair Stanley Mickelson, who had stopped in for the event.
As the sky grew dark, the crowd shuffled next door for the annual tree lighting in front of Town Hall.
