Catching the Christmas spirit in Wisconsin

Santa’s right at home at the Ostoff Resort here in Elkart Lake Wisconsin where winter is frosty and white and just cold enough for the ponds to be prepared for ice skating. I’m here for the annul Christmas Market, which you may have read about in Last Sunday’s travel section.
The resort is aswarm with parents and excited little ones here to meet with Mrs. Santa Claus in a cookie decorating workshop and then see the Joly Old Elf himself.  Santa holds forth beneath a brightly decorated tree near an old fashioned sleigh filled with wrapped gifts. Inside a nearby room is a wonderful buffet – with knee high serving stations for little children. A pianist plays and sings Christmas carols.

I just finished up my Christmas shopping at the Christmas market, where 100 vendors are gathered in their booths beneath a large white tent it a football field sized space that  has another life as a parking lot. Each of the vendors is in its own smaller tent draped with pine boughs and twinkle lights. Many of them are from Germany, and the Czech Republic and even Istanbul and Russia. They bring  handcrafts from family businesses and  community cooperatives, offering bargains for really unusual merchandise. Plenty of Wisconsin folks, from cheesemakers to  knitters and even a family who makes items from reindeer antlers. Their reindeer are outside the tent, posing for photos and I’m told they’ll come indoors tomorrow for the resort’s gala Sunday brunch.

It’s about  15 degrees out now and our group is scheduled for a horse drawn sleigh ride in about a half hour. So I’m  back in my room to bundle up, with a fire going in my fireplace  and still warm inside from the gluhwein I sampled at the Christmas market.