Almost 100 new beauties will be seen in this year’s Festival of Trees at the Carnegie Library Museum. Along with the many cleverly themed trees and wreaths and the beautiful Christmas village of Becky Shelker, visitors will find the Santa Claus collection of Dirk Cavanaugh and Carol Jackson-Cavanaugh, now numbering about 100 figures.
Dirk Cavanaugh gave thumbnail histories of some of the figures as he unpacked them Wednesday and arranged them around the Carnegie fireplace.
“We were shopping at a Christmas market in Munich, Germany, and I saw this Santa that I really liked,” Cavanaugh said, pointing to a squat and golden St. Nick. “It just kind of bloomed from there, starting with the ceramic ones where you put the tea candles in the back then moving to regular ceramic ones.”
The collection soon moved beyond ceramic figures and now includes Santas of every sort and variety. About 40 were bought overseas.
“When we got to Kazakhstan, we saw they do these little ones,” Cavanaugh said, pointing to several intricately detailed Santas. The Cavanaughs lived in Kazakhstan for eight years.
Some of the most striking Santas in the collection come from countries where Christmas is not celebrated and Christianity is little practiced, and Cavanaugh appreciates the irony of some of his pieces.
“They bring this stuff in because they know they can sell it,” he said of some overseas Santas. “I got this one in Turkey and, of course, they’re Muslim.”
With a twinkle in his eye, he said some of the collection’s most authentic examples of American folk art were actually made in China.
One of the curious figures comes from Iceland, which has a folk tradition of 12 Santas who are sometimes called the Yule Lads. The Yule Lads are tricksterish figures much given to stealing food. One suckles the ewes in the farmers’ sheep folds, and another steals the foam from cow’s milk. One licks spoons and another unwashed pots.
The Cavanaughs’ Yule Lad has a huge nose and an equally huge appetite for stolen baked goods, and he is shown making off with a large Christmas ham. The effect is very comic.
The 2018 Festival of Trees, including about 100 Cavanaugh Santas, will open Saturday, Nov. 17 at noon and continue through Dec. 23.
