Letters to Santa continue to be received in at least two locations in town. One of the dedicated mailboxes is at The Toy Tree, within The Village at Lexington Gardens at 32 Church Hill Road, and the other is at Baum Braces, nearby at 23 Church Hill Road. Children are invited to drop their letters off at The Toy Tree — which is collaborating with Newtown Youth & Family Services on this special project — before December 15. For those who would like to correspond with the big guy through Baum Braces, letters are due in that mailbox by December 17. For both locations, those who remember to include a self-addressed stamped envelope will receive a response by Christmas.

Newtown Youth & Family Services is getting ready for the big Newtown Holiday Festival, which returns this Sunday along Main Street and is the largest annual fundraiser for the long-standing agency. Many events are ticketed, and you can read about the festival in this week’s Enjoy section. In addition to everything that takes place on Sunday (and Saturday, when the Festival of Trees opens at Trinity Church), the festival includes an online auction. Dozens of local businesses, clubs, and organizations, and even a few individuals, have donated a collection of 31 lots for this year’s auction, which opened November 28. Bidding continues until 5 pm Friday, December 12. The easiest way to find the auction is to visit newtownyouthandfamilyservices.org. Happy bidding!

The Holiday Festival is one of many events happening in town this weekend. Special events are planned Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Among them are the annual Christmas Trees (& More) Sale at Sandy Hook Fire & Rescue’s main station, The Garden Club of Newtown’s Holiday Greens & Gifts Sale, Rotary’s 65th (!!!) Pancake Breakfast, Reverie’s Holiday Market, Newtown Choral Society and Trinity Church Choir live performances, Flagpole Radio Cafe's Holiday Show (with special guest Patty Larkin!), Newtown Historical Society’s Holiday Open House, and more. Additionally, the 2025 US Marine Corps Toys For Tots Collection is underway at multiple locations in town (with a special Newtown PD Stuff-A-Truck event planned for Saturday), and Congregation Adath Israel is presenting one of my favorite annual displays: a collection of traditional and contemporary menorahs loaned by members to C.H. Booth Library. Details on these events and others are available in our print and online calendars.

Bruce is certainly ready for Christmas! Bee Publishing Company employees were greeted with this new costume, Bruce the Christmas Tree Spruce, when they arrived at work on Monday. The three-foot-tall artificial pine tree in our Production Department was wearing his latest costume. Lynn Remson created this one with a pair of tree skirts, some cardboard, big googly eyes, and her imagination.

This year’s Newtown Woman’s Club pewter ornament has been released and I’ve been asked to offer a reminder that they are available at our office, 5 Church Hill Road. They will also be available at the Circulation Desk at C.H. Booth Library, 25 Main Street; Newtown MediSpa, 34 Church Hill Road; and The Toy Tree, 32 Church Hill Road. The ornament series was launched in 1988 and has continued annually since then. The 2025 ornament takes a departure in that it doesn’t present something from town. Previous designs have depicted or otherwise honored Newtown Forest Association, Ferris Farm, the 9/11 flag trees in Dodgingtown, Newtown Police Department, and The Liberty and Peace Memorial, among many others. This year’s pewter ornament depicts a wreath as designed by current NWC President Rosemary Rau, who also researched and wrote a brief history of the traditional holiday decoration to be included with each purchase. Ornaments remain $20 each, cash or check, and proceeds benefit the local women’s club.

I was so sorry to hear about Esther. One of the original Newtown-Strong Therapy Dog canines, Esther died earlier this week. She was among the first graduating groups of those special animals, “when all was still raw … so unnerved and heartbroken” over 12/14, according to the notice announcing her death earlier this week. Esther worked with Jen Franke, and the two were quite a pair. Esther had a costume for every season, and the two spent hours visiting many, many people over the years. My condolences to Jen this week. I’m truly sorry to hear about this loss.

Newtown residents have many things to be thankful for. Here’s a surprising one: gas station attendants. Every year the US Labor Department updates its list of professions that have officially vanished, meaning those that are too small to count in the nation’s monthly jobs report. A recent survey by resume.io asked people to share the vanishing jobs they miss most. The nationwide survey overwhelmingly placed gas station attendants as the most missed people. From Alabama to Alaska — and including Connecticut — residents of more than 30 states picked it as the job they miss most.

Local readers know we buck that trend, fortunately, thanks to the Wheels Citgo station on Church Hill Road. Year-round, there is still a team of employees who continue to make the walk out to customer vehicles, fill the tank, often check the oil and/or windshield, and often make conversation. That was the thing many people responding to the resume.io survey said they missed: the nostalgia “for a time when customer service involved eye contact instead of a card reader. For many, it wasn’t just about topping off the tank — it was about someone remembering your name, your car, and maybe your preferred brand of gum.”

Paperboys were also among the top jobs missed today in much of the Northeast. We feel that. It was just a few years ago that we stopped sending someone outside on Thursday afternoons to sell just-printed copies of The Newtown Bee. You can still get the fresh-off-the-presses papers right away, of course, thanks to the cart we roll out to the sidewalk each week. There’s just no one there to hand it to you, offer a smile, and make some small talk before you head home to start reading.

In Connecticut, the Top 10 Lost Jobs Missed Most continued with the following, in descending order: film developer, video rental clerk, bowling alley pin setter, arcade attendant, tollbooth collector, VHS repair technician, record store clerk (“Cooler than anyone you knew, with an encyclopedic knowledge of B-sides and attitude to match,” the survey’s notes included), door-to-door encyclopedia salesperson, and paperboy. The survey additionally asked people which office relics they miss the most. Nutmeggers are missing the clack of typewriters, the smell of fresh photocopies, Rolodexes, fax machines, and dot-matrix printers, the latter described as “Loud, slow, and oddly satisfying, like a mechanical caterpillar printing your destiny one hole-punched page at a time.”

I hope you don’t think of me as a relic. I have my nine lives, of course, and I’ve lived longer through this column than most people we know, but that just means I’m ageless. If you’ll think of me fondly I promise to do the same in return, especially if you remember to come back next week, when it will be time to … read me again.