Welcome to Thursday Doors! This is a weekly challenge for people who love doors and architecture to come together to admire and share their favorite door photos, drawings, or other images or stories from around the world. If you’d like to join us, simply create your own Thursday Doors post each (or any) week and then share a link to your post in the comments below, anytime between 12:01 am Thursday morning and Saturday noon (North American eastern time). If you like, you can add our badge to your post.
For the past several years, my holiday doors have come courtesy of the evening stroll around Old Sturbridge Village during their wonderful Christmas by Candlelight event. This year, my post is a day early—we will be attending Christmas by Candlelight tomorrow.
The event has become a family tradition for our daughter and me. We’ve been there in the rain, in the snow, and on nights when a bracing cup of hot chocolate (spiked with Peppermint Schnapps) was required. We’re only there for a couple hours, people lived under those conditions in the 1830s, the time period the village depicts.
The pictures tell their own story, but I give a shout out to the management and staff of OSV. The event is always amazing, and the interpreters we see, many of whom are volunteers, are wonderful. It’s one thing to learn period techniques for printing, woodworking, metal working, farming and other trades. It’s quite another thing to dress the part and perform for an audience. Walking through the village in the dark and stepping out of the cold into a building that isn’t that much warmer, makes the event more real.
So, tomorrow, we will bundle-up, drive to Sturbridge and check out the displays and performances. We will walk the (optional) long path through the woods, cross the covered bridge, circle the mill pond, and yes, we will have hot chocolate. I will add to my collection of pictures from OSV, but given the remaining schedule for Thursday Doors in 2022, I won’t be sharing them this year.
About that schedule—Next week we suggest sharing your favorite doors from 2022. After that, Thursday Doors will be on its holiday hiatus. There will be no challenge on December 22nd or on the 29th. Thursday Doors will return on January 5th, 2023.
When we return, we will have a new challenge badge. Full details and rules for the challenge will be posted here next week, but the skinny version is this: If you are creatively inclined, you are welcome to create a badge that depicts the spirit of Thursday Doors. Our current badge is proudly displayed at the top of this post. Unlike previous years, this year only people who have participated in the challenge during 2022 will be invited to vote for the new badge. We ask them to add it to their posts, I think we should let them select the winner.
For now, please scroll through the gallery and enjoy pictures from previous visits to Old Sturbridge Village (including the Gingerbread House Contest) during the holiday season.
If you are in a hurry and don’t wish to scroll through the comments, click to Jump to the comment form.
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