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Photography by Alise O’Brien
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It was November 1984, and Ken and Betsy Heck had just returned to St. Charles from their Jamaican honeymoon. “What are we going to do with all this rum?” Mrs. Heck wondered aloud. “Let’s have a party,” her husband replied.
One month later, the newlyweds hosted around 20 of their best pals in their tiny one-bedroom apartment. Twenty-seven unbroken years later, the Hecks’ Saturday-before-Christmas party has become a steadfast tradition. The only thing to change has been the guest list, which now stands at around 50, and the address, now a three-bedroom farm-style house in Wildwood. “There are about 10 of the 50 guests that have made it all 27 years,” says Mrs. Heck.
Hot spiced wine, finger foods, and old-school holiday tunes keep guests lingering until well after midnight. But the real draw is the house—and its contents. Mrs. Heck is an avid collector and dealer of early American folk art, known as primitives, and the pride and joy of her collection is antique Christmas decorations. Every year, just after Thanksgiving, the treasures come marching out—toys, ornaments, trees, Santas—transforming her home into a turn-of-the-century portrait of Christmas cozy. As she sets up for this year’s party, Mrs. Heck revels in every piece.
Her Favorite Collectible: Santa Claus Candy Containers
“My passion is late-1800s German Santa Claus candy containers,” Mrs. Heck says, sliding off a Santa’s body to reveal a tiny candy cup within. Mrs. Heck has around 20 candy containers in her collection. The great majority of them are Santa Clauses, save for the occasional deer or snowman. Typically perched atop Santa’s boots, most of the candy cups are empty at this point. But one of the oldest examples Mrs. Heck has, a rare blue-robed Santa, has its original chocolate inside. And her prize possession is an exceptionally tall, 2-foot Santa. “I’d put police tape around him if I could,” she says. Instead, she surrounds him with an antique yellow sled and a sheep pull toy, which “bleats when you push its head down.”
The Funny Thing About Santas
“The early Santas—the Père Noël, Father Christmas, Bells Nichols—weren’t jolly like the ones we know now,” says Mrs. Heck. “They were more about keeping kids in line. Bells Nichols actually carried a switch in his hand.”
Her Other Favorite Collectible: Feather Trees
“Feather trees are the original artificial Christmas tree,” Mrs. Heck says of the late-1800s/early-1900s trees made of goose feathers, wire branches, and wood or metal trunks. Most feather trees stand around 2 feet tall (their taller counterparts not having stood the test of time); Mrs. Heck does own a 4-footer and a 5-footer, though.
Of her eight or so feather trees, Mrs. Heck’s favorite is her first. “Ken gave it to me for our 10th anniversary,” she recalls. Because their delicate branches can’t support heavy primitive ornaments, Mrs. Heck decorates them with lighter ones, such as pipe-cleaner candy canes and reflector ornaments from the 1940s and ’50s. Mr. Heck’s favorite holiday decoration is the feather tree she festoons with fishing and hunting ornaments.
One More Favorite: Bottle-Brush Trees
The Heck household is a veritable forest of bottle-brush trees, the tiny antique decorations made by dyeing bottle brushes and inserting them into a wooden base. “These were the trees people made when they couldn’t afford or didn’t have access to real Christmas trees,” says Mrs. Heck. “And that’s really the reason I started collecting them, too. They’re usually less than $10.”
She has approximately 200 bottle-brush trees total. Most are green (“green was the most accessible dye color”); less common are the all-white and speckled-white versions.
Her Real Tree
It’s a 6-foot Frasier fir, tucked in the pocket doorway between the living and family rooms. “I think it’s the most old-fashioned–looking of the trees,” Mrs. Heck says.
The Beginnings of Her Passion
“My Mom loved to decorate. She made Christmas the most special thing ever,” Mrs. Heck says. “She wasn’t into antiques, necessarily, but she did like an old look, and during the holidays she went nuts.”
Though she didn’t think of it in those terms, Mrs. Heck’s collecting career began at age 13, when her Aunt Settie gave her a cup and saucer in Spode’s Christmas-tree pattern. “She gave me one piece every year after that,” Mrs. Heck says. “At first I hated it. I thought, ‘What am I going to do with this?’” The china set grew on her (literally and figuratively), as did the rest of her antiques inventory. “I collected slowly and methodically at first, putting things on layaway,” she says. “As I moved on in life—and salary—I started to acquire older, more valuable pieces.”
One of those valuables, a mustard-painted Pennsylvania Dutch cupboard, now stows Mrs. Heck’s nearly 100-piece china collection. “We get it out every year for the party,” she says.
Don’t Tell Anyone
“I have a Christmas closet,” Mrs. Heck says, sheepishly opening the door to an upstairs walk-in closet. Meticulously stocked with overflow ornaments, trees, and Santas, the space is more like an antiques booth than a closet. “You’re not going to take a picture of this, right?”
On January 7…
It all comes down. “It is depressing,” Mrs. Heck says. “I’ll change the mantel out with snowmen, so I still have a little piece of it.”
Another Christmas morsel she allows herself year-round: a small cupboard full of Santas. The primitive blue storage piece hangs on a living-room wall next to a framed cross-stitch sampler that reads, “I will honor Christmas in my heart and try to keep it all year.”
As Mrs. Heck notes, “I figure the cross-stitch gives me my excuse to keep out the Santas.”
