Susan's Christmas Shop Newsletter
Summer Houseguests 2025
August 29th,2025
Dear Customers and Friends of Susan's Christmas Shop,
If you add a room and a bathroom to your Santa Fe house, you will have houseguests. This summer my houseguests are my son, Andrew and his Spanish wife, Maribel. They arrived in early July. They will stay till September 17th. A few weeks later, their son and his Danish girlfriend arrived to stay for a month. Thank goodness I have a sofa bed! Melissa's son came too but slept on her side of the street. We all went to Bandelier together.
Andrew and Maribel love to cook and promised to cook this summer. We have had some delicious Spanish dishes like paella and a tortilla (like a Spanish omelet using eggs, squash and potatoes). Paella at this altitude is tricky because the rice is usually cooked at sea level and we are at 7,000 feet.
We had many nice suppers in my garden.
We went to pueblo feast days where I have friends, including Santa Ana, Jemez and Santo Domingo. We went to operas at the Santa Fe Opera, preceded by picnics with a view of pinon covered hills and the setting sun.
One of the operas this summer was Wagner's Die Walküre, which is four hours long. None of us managed to finish the last act, but we enjoyed what we did hear.
"Life is short; the opera is long; Wagner is forever."
We went to Spanish Market and Indian Market. I bought a necklace at Indian Market. It has a title, Raincloud Blessings. The pieces of turquoise represent raindrops. It is by a young Santo Domingo jeweler named Clayton Cate. He won a ribbon for it at the Eiteljorg Museum Indian Market earlier this year. The Eiteljorg Museum is in Indianapolis. We may see him again at the Santo Domingo Puelo Labor Day Arts and Crafts Fair this weekend.
Andrew and Maribel quickly settled into their private suite, which includes a small bedroom, a larger room with a high ceiling, and a bathroom with a double hung window and lace curtains. The shower will allow me to roll into it if I am ever in a wheelchair. The larger room was designed to be Andrew's studio for painting when he is here. He likes it so much that he is working on a large painting of the view through the north windows. It is not yet finished, but this painting will eventually hang in his new Santa Fe studio.
To give Andrew and Maribel room to sleep in the small bedroom, a double bed was placed there, a tight fit. A twin bed was removed. I love the twin bed but no longer need it, so I want to sell it. If you are interested and live close enough to pick it up, please call my shop at 505-983-2127. The frame is metal; the mattress and bedspread are optional.
My Spanish grandson and his Danish girlfriend have returned to Copenhagen, where they study at two different universities. The day they left, my Dutch friend Fenny Schreur arrived from the Netherlands. We had enough time to wash the sheets for Fenny to sleep on the sofa bed.
I met Fenny in my shop ten years ago. I drove us to Acoma Feast Day that year. This year on September 2nd, all of us will drive there. It a two-hour drive from Santa Fe, but it is a spectacular location for a pueblo feast day, a thousand-year-old village on top of a stone mesa nearly 400 feet above the floor of the desert. We will eat in a house behind the old adobe and stone church, begun in 1629. Some of its walls are nine feet thick.
Mary Garcia is an Acoma potter who makes pottery ornaments for my shop. We will also eat at her house at Old Acoma on September 2nd.
Fenny and I drove up the High Road to Taos as far as Penasco, to have lunch at Sugar Nymphs Bistro. We also stopped at Las Trampas to see the Spanish Colonial adobe church, as old as our country (1776) and freshly plastered outside with real mud. Las Trampas is almost always locked, but I have a good photograph of the interior at my shop. If you want to see it, just ask the next time you are there.
Friday night, August 29th is the night they burn Zozobra. Last year we sold out of our glass ornament celebrating 100 years of Zozobra. We had more made for us in Poland this year. They are the same price as last year, $75. They are not in the shop yet, but they will be soon, a miracle in these times of shipping delays. Please call my shop if you want one. 505-983-2127
I have one more Bethlehem nativity by Robert Toledo of Jemez Pueblo. Robert lives in Los Angeles but comes to his home village in New Mexico at least once a year, traveling by train with his unique nativity. This one is full of distinctive pottery figures. The price is $1600 and has not changed in all the years I have bought them.
One room of a married couple's house becomes "Bethlehem". All the furniture of the main room is removed. An altar is placed in one corner. After Midnight Mass, a procession walks from the village church, carrying the wooden Baby Jesus and another saint to wherever Bethlehem is that year. Mary sits in a chair in the right side of the altar. Joseph sits in a chair on the left side of the altar. The wooden Baby Jesus is put on the altar, along with the other saint and a few special items. Benches are placed around the walls for pueblo spectators to use to watch the dancers who come into Bethlehem to dance in honor of Baby Jesus. This photo shows the altar with a candle stick, a small drum, the Baby Jesus, and a bowl representing corn pollen to sprinkle on the Baby as a blessing. Mary and Joseph have separate chairs on each side of the altar. Dancers dance in the center of the room. There is a corner fireplace with a chimney to place above the roof. A drummer beats the drum and sings the song for the dancers. Spectators watch through the window or sit on small benches or sprawled on the floor like the boy and his dog. If you want this nativity, please call my shop at 505-983-2127.
It has been a summer of flowers. We placed two flowerpots close to the front door and filled them with colorful flowers we enjoy each time we pass them.
Fenny enjoys gardening and together we pulled weeds around my rose bushes after a summer rain. Yesterday, she pulled more weeds in the front yard. It was Fenny's idea, and such a lovely thoughtful gift.
I hope your own summer is full of flowers and friends and family. If you come to Santa Fe this summer, please stop by my shop to see what's new. If you live too far away to do this, I send my fond greetings, no matter where you live in this wide world.
If you live too far away to do this, I send my fond greetings, no matter where you are in this wide world.
Your friend in Santa Fe,
Sussan Topp Weber
505-983-2127 shop
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