I'm Shirley Min and you ought to know we're exploring holiday traditions.

Your holiday meal may not be complete without cranberries.

Cranberry harvest time is a time of tradition.

An unorthodox holiday show is becoming a fan favorite.

Chris's joy becomes our joy.

Christmas ornament inspired by Mother Nature.

It's a social scene as well as a crafty scene.

And artisans are hard at work on creating that holiday magic.

I put a little bit of myself in every single one of these that I do.

Welcome to You Oughta Know, I'm Shirley Min.

We're coming to you from Craftsman Row Saloon in Center City, where the over-the-top holiday decorations would make even Clark Griswold proud.

Today's show is all about holiday traditions.

Later, we'll take a look back at a beloved Philly tradition that's disappeared but certainly hasn't been forgotten.

Can you guess what it is?

Stick around to find out.

But first, we're taking you to a place that feels like something straight out of a Dickens novel.

The first cowlers were made about a year after I was out of college.

I went to Drexel and I studied fashion design.

A lot of this came very natural to me because I enjoyed costuming of different types.

I had lots of scraps left over from the fashion design and the clay for the faces was just always something that I enjoyed playing with.

So I took a coat hanger and it was sturdy enough.

It held the fabrics.

I cut them to fit the different characters.

I created them as Christmas gifts for my family and someone said to me, "You could probably sell these."

We were like all newlyweds, desperate for money.

So I took them to a women's exchange.

They said, "Well, I don't know.

We'll give them a try."

They put them out and before I got home I think they were calling saying, "Could you bring us more?"

And I realized, "Hey, I may have something going here.

I should explore this a little bit.

As the business grew, it moved from the garage to a small factory to another factory.

It just kept growing and changing place every couple years.

So in 1994, we picked a place here in Chalfont to be the forever home for Byers Choice.

My father really felt that it was important to have a place that was inspirational for all the artisans.

He bought artwork that we put on the factory floor as well as in the offices, really to inspire everyone who is here and make them feel good on a daily basis.

I've been here for 25 years.

Today I am working on the English Countryside Santa.

I am a dresser, which means I take all the parts that are done in other departments and make the finished piece.

The place is set up with a visitor center where we have 50 or 60,000 people a year come through.

You then go into villages of carolers and there's an observation deck where you can actually see the artisans at work.

We still make all of the carolers here in Chalfont I put a little bit of myself in every single one of these that I do.

My main goal is to recreate Joyce's sample, but I also get to put a little bit of my own personality into it.

How I pose the head or the arms, how I position the accessories.

My first caroler was purchased for me by my mom.

My mother had a set of four carolers that was an example of our family.

One daughter with dark hair, which is representative of my sister, and then a daughter with light hair, which was representative of me.

Any given caroler that you see here, probably only 100 was made.

That's how much variety we have.

We can make each one unique because it's handcrafted.

No two heads are exactly alike because the person dressing them poses them in different ways.

They speak differently to different people.

I have a little boy in pajamas.

His face is my son.

Being here, it's my happy place.

From the beginning my father decided that the company would give 20% of its profits back to strengthen the community and it's a really rewarding place to be.

My greatest joy in coming to work here every day is knowing that what I do is going to bring joy to whoever buys it.

It'll be a tradition for them and their families.

Acorns, pine cones, even eggshells.

In the right hands, they can become whimsical little creations.

Come with me inside the Brandywine Museum of Art's Critter Workshop, where I meet the volunteers behind these beloved holiday decorations and even try my hand at making one myself.

Inside this workshop, more than 100 volunteers turn nature's odds and ends into tiny works of art.

I should warn you, I'm really not crafty.

Okay.

So when you're walking around outside, you'll look around at stuff on the ground.

Do you get inspired and say, "That would make a great critter"?

- Then you know you're a true critter maker.

- Yeah.

Whether it's a fluffy sheep or a snowman decorated with crushed up eggshells, each critter has its own little personality.

And no two are alike.

We use a lot of different seeds, a lot of different grasses.

But there are some more eye-catching things, like this is called Chinese lantern.

This is a walnut shell.

- Black walnuts, we'll add some eyes, add a little beak, put it on a body and then boom, you have a critter.

(upbeat music) - Everything is a critter.

- Everything can be a critter.

- I can't wait to make my own critter and I'm going to learn from one of the best.

What are we making today?

- Today we're gonna make a turtle and I'm gonna, don't worry, we're gonna do it step by step.

(upbeat music) - So we have a pod and a peach pit.

We're gonna use that for the head for the turtle.

(upbeat music) - So 13 years you've been doing this.

What keeps you coming back every year?

- You know, I've developed some really close friendships here.

It's a social scene as well as a crafty scene.

So we're using some white beans, and we're gonna put those on first, and then the little black dots.

Once you put the word out, I mean, boxes of pine cones start showing up, and some people, rather than crittering and making critters, are collectors.

You know, and they'll collect materials for us and bring them to the workshop.

- And the tradition dates back to the 1970s, when Brandywine Conservancy co-founder George Frolick Weymouth had an idea.

Decorate the museum with ornaments made entirely from nature.

It just became so popular that in 1984, the White House reached out and said, Hey, would you guys like to decorate our big Christmas tree?

And so that was another huge honor, a huge task for the Brandywine volunteers.

Together they came up with 3,000 ornaments to decorate that big tree.

The following year, the museum held its first critter sale.

The critters sold out in a day.

And the tradition has continued ever since, with proceeds supporting art education and public programming.

at the work table, my turtle is still a work in progress.

(upbeat music) What do we think?

- I'm taking a picture of that one.

- I'm so proud of myself.

- Give her a hand, girls.

(laughing) I'm telling you.

(clapping) That's lovely.

The Brandywine Museum of Art's annual Critter Sale is next week, so check it out.

I have a lot of good memories about the light show.

When I was younger, they used to do a lot of school trips for us to bring us on Uber.

We would go shopping, enjoy the show.

It meant a lot to me as a kid because it became an annual thing every year we would do.

As I get older, I even appreciated it more.

Our family would come down and enjoy it and I just feel sad that they took it away.

I wish it was still there.

I know it's a tradition for a lot of other people but we hate to let go of tradition and it was a beautiful thing.

I actually like when the reindeers start coming.

If I can remember correctly I think they were playing the bugles but I mean the whole thing was fantastic.

I thought it was just something that was gonna be there forever for generation and generation.

So many fond memories of the Wanamaker Light Show.

Well right here at Craftsman Row Saloon, another holiday tradition is taking shape.

I'm here with the owners Vasili Kyi and George Tesouris, brother and sister, the team behind the restaurant.

Thank you so much for having me.

Thank you so much first off, wow, whoa, this is incredible.

This is a lot.

You did a lot and it looks so festive.

I want to ask, are the holidays a big deal for you two and your family?

Yes, absolutely.

Holidays always have been Christmas, always hold a special place in our heart.

And we love decorating.

We always had over-the-top food and milkshakes.

We wanted to embrace everybody in decorations floor to ceiling.

You've always decorated for the holidays, but how did the idea of going over the top and decorating at this level come about?

It was this guy's idea.

You're to blame.

Yeah, I'm to blame, but it's a fun blame.

Basically, we just saw the space and we're like, you know what, we can just make this a Christmas dream.

And here we are elaborating every year, adding more and more, and just bringing a smile to people's faces, which we enjoy.

Yeah, I don't see a lot of empty white space anywhere.

We try not to.

Yeah.

Every year we find something, yeah.

Yeah, so you are kind of besting yourself every year.

What changed from last year to this year?

So there's always, you know, a journey we want to bring people into the space and kind of tell a story.

We have new installations that usually go up.

This year there was a moss and evergreen installation and there's like snow capped little nods in there.

We have a cloud with the snow coming down from it.

A naughty and nice section over here with, you know, the nut crackers holding guard.

So we always love to bring a different element to it.

That's so fun.

And we keep adding ornaments.

You can never have enough ornaments or enough lights.

And what are you hearing?

What's the reaction from the customers?

We love seeing, you know, people's faces light up and saying this is great.

Some people come, you know, and make it a tradition and come every year.

So it just, you know, makes it so enjoyable to see that.

How can you not be in a good mood either when you see this, right?

Exactly, yeah.

That's what we love.

We love seeing people smile, they walk in.

It's just, it's great a couple months here enjoying the happiness.

Yeah, everyone gets into the spirit and so that's really a lot of fun.

In addition to the decorations, the menu also takes on a festive twist, which I am really excited to try later.

It's the factory that makes Christmas and it's based in Philadelphia.

We're a manufacturing pencil right here on the premises as we have been doing for 75 years.

The Nutcracker is a holiday favorite for many families, but this offbeat version of it has become a holiday tradition of its own.

Oh, hi.

Here you are at the Nutcracker.

And the more you want it to end, the more we dance.

[laughter] One Man Nutcracker, I thought, that title is so good.

That tells you everything you need to know.

There's one person, and he's gonna do the entire Nutcracker.

Let's go.

I've been making one-person shows for the last 15 years in Philadelphia.

It costs a lot of money to make theater, and so I thought, "What if I cut out everyone and just have it be me?"

I was going to see The Nutcracker year after year.

It's a tradition I've been doing for a while, and I thought, "What if I actually just tried to do this whole thing?"

When one person tries to tackle all this, it becomes very manic, right?

You have to change your clothes and all this.

That's really funny for the audience.

I like to transform in front of you.

You actually get to see me become Drosselmeyer.

It is part feats of strength, part dissection of ritual, Part stand-up.

It's better than CGI!

It's shadows!

Just expression of pure joy.

It sounds corny, but Chris's joy becomes our joy.

This has become a Christmas tradition for me, and every time I see it, it's different.

One of the most creative, hysterical things I've ever seen.

And he made me laugh so much.

The physicality of the Nutcracker is very important.

Part of telling this story to me is that the ballet needs to be on point.

It needs to be good.

When I started in 2019, I was not good at ballet.

Pivot.

Step on it and then step on your right foot for your first sauté.

Sauté.

People don't think about the arts athletically.

I think that's something that surprises people when they realize that there's athleticism inside of theater.

[MUSIC PLAYING] There is this beautiful part where he's talking about being a kid and seeing, like, the giant Nutcracker jaws for the first time.

I remember going to the Pennsylvania Ballet and seeing a huge Nutcracker on stage.

It had these big teeth, like a big, gaping mouth hole, and these huge teeth, these big chompers.

And I just kept staring at it.

When we first saw that in the audience, Something about this chomping and these giant jaws of the nutcracker cracked us up.

Chomp, chomp, chomp, chomp, chomp, chomp, chomp, chomp, chomp, chomp, chomp, chomp, chomp, chomp, chomp.

And in that moment, I knew I had to get up here.

This is where I belonged.

They treat my one-man nutcracker the same way the people that go to the bigger one do, which is like, this is what we do, this is our tradition.

Now I get to be a little bit part of their tradition.

I worked one Christmas season at John Wanamaker's on the Toyland floor, which was the eighth floor.

Every afternoon I would check in to work.

You had to go through the center court.

So naturally, there was always a crowd of people.

The kids would be like just staring away at it.

For them, it was great.

And then the older people liked it too.

It was a Philadelphia tradition to go to the light show.

And then from there, you would go through the different floors to do your Christmas shopping.

Now, some people naturally go to lunch or dinner, depending on the time of day.

So it was like, let's start at Wannamakers and then we'll go from there.

I moved to Philly last year for a job, and I've always loved this city.

I knew the light show was one of the fantastic things that I wanted to make sure I saw during the Christmas season.

And it was everything I really wanted it to be.

It's going to be a core memory for years to come.

And it was just a fantastic kind of unique light show.

And I even took some friends from Lancaster to make sure they got the experience.

Cranberries are a staple on many holiday tables, But to get them from the bog to your dinner table takes a lot of hard work.

And for some New Jersey families, it's a tradition that spans generations.

Cranberry harvest time is a great time of tradition for the families in New Jersey.

My name is Sean Cutts.

I'm a fourth generation cranberry grower.

Our family has been growing cranberries here since we believe 1901 was when we grew our first cranberry.

Harvest time is a special time.

It's the culmination of a year's worth of work in terms of the crop that we've been growing all summer.

Because we're a smaller operation we don't have enough full-time help to get through harvest so a lot of our in-laws, brothers, sisters, cousins, people that are scattered across the country will come back and join the crew and not only sort of reunite but work hard to get the crop into the truck and the cranberries down the road.

My sister and I, we are the fifth generation.

We work here with our dad, our brother-in-law Jeremy, and all our employees.

We have around 40 and about 60 for the harvest season.

In New Jersey there's about 15 families that farm cranberries and most of those families been farming cranberries for many many generations.

As a fourth generation grower I always joke that our family is sort of the new kids on the block.

Our families have been friends for generations.

We work well together.

We help each other out.

I drive by their operation every day and you know see all that they're doing and it motivates me to want to do better here.

For harvest we have a couple guys who are retired who have worked here 40 years already.

They're retired now.

They're driving the trucks to all the cranberries to the Ocean's Prairie receiving station.

It just makes me happy to see that.

People, you know, we know in our whole lives they are part of our family at this point and for them to want to come back and for us all to still work together every harvest is something we really are proud of.

Knowing that our fruit is on the Thanksgiving tables of so many people is really a rewarding feeling.

My memories of the light show are coming with my twin brother and my mom.

We would come down from Bensalem and that would be our family tradition around Christmas time and just listen to the music.

My mom works down here so we'd do a whole day and obviously watch the light show and then walk around the city after that.

The memories with my mother and my brother, like I would love to have that for my kids one day.

And I don't see anything like the Wanamaker Light Show.

My earliest memory of the Light Show was my mom working in John Wanamaker's during the season and coming down to meet her.

I would walk from Masterman where I went to school and then every year after that I would come down, even though I'm Muslim, to see the Light Show because it was so beautiful and it brought back so many memories of good times.

I used to go and meet friends at the Eagle in the center of the first floor and listen to the organ they used to play every day at 12 o'clock.

So we hold on to our traditions and we love them and I dearly miss John Watermaker Building.

From lights to inflatable Santas, there's one store that's been helping Philly deck the halls for years.

We love the fact that we are a warehouse.

So there are no frills.

We are not fancy.

And we hope that the customer who is shopping in Kindy's knows what they're coming into.

They're actually coming into the factory and they're coming to see the product that we actually are manufacturing or importing right into our warehouse.

We're manufacturing tinsel right here on the premises as we have been doing for 75, 80 years.

It has been an unbelievable joy and wonderful experience to have a family business that It's a family business that has existed since 1932.

Four generations of the family have been seriously involved and very committed to keeping this business going.

The people in the neighborhood knew we were manufacturing tinsel garland and ice and lights and they literally did knock on the doors hoping that during the holiday season they'd They'd be able to come in and see what was inside the warehouse and the factory, if not, purchase it.

You want to try these before I put them in the bag?

We love to talk to the customers and very often they will come up to us and tell us that they shopped here as children, that their grandparents brought them here as children, their grandparents shopped in Kindy's.

And it sort of has become, it's a holiday tradition in this area of South Philadelphia that families have been coming to Kindy's for so many years.

Well we've driven by here a thousand times and everybody says that Kindy's is the place to go for inexpensive Christmas ornaments.

My wife has just a small collection of Christmas ornaments so I'm not allowed to say how many boxes that she has.

But I did have to build special shelves for her out in the garage.

Kindy's legacy will be that we stayed true to the traditions, the actual theme of what we started out to do 45 years ago, which was to open our warehouse and provide for the an opportunity to shop for all of the all of the products that they would be looking for, for the holidays.

We hope that how we the way we started out many many years ago with the theme of being a family and providing for families during the holiday season would stay with people.

Okay so this is my favorite part of the show.

I get to taste and try what's on the menu.

You guys this this is so cute.

I love this.

What's on the menu?

Let's start with the drinks.

Sure.

We get so excited to do the drinks as well.

And a lot of them have keepsakes.

You can bring them home with you afterwards.

Here we have our Frosties Approved.

It's a coconut base.

It has tequila in it.

We have our Christmas Lights Spectacular with sparkling wine, a little elderflower and lemon.

And then over here we have our Rudolph.

It's a vodka base.

has strawberry puree and add some triple sec and lemon.

We have our Grinch shot over here, which melon gives it its color.

And our Santa's hat, which is basically a lemon drop and in the seasons notes.

- How did you think about this?

So how do you think of these?

Like I would never think to put a little marshmallow on top of a strawberry and make a Santa's hat.

- We get so inspired by what the decorations are and also what our guests love.

And we love getting creative and we want it to look great but we want it to be equally as delicious.

Let's talk about the food because it smells amazing.

Thank you.

So here we have our candy cane caprese.

We have a little prosciutto on the side, delicious mozzarella with balsamic dressing.

Then here we have our letters to Santa.

Naughty or nice, I guess you'll find out when you open your letter.

We have the arancini balls here with delicious marinara.

Over here we have our Buffalo Chicken Seasonal Wreath, inspired by a wreath and the holiday decor.

And then we have our Christmas Dinner Burger here with delicious local ground meat, cranberry sauce as well.

And of course at the end we have our Gobbler, which is our Thanksgiving dinner take in a Like a turkey burger?

Yes, exactly.

Oh my gosh, I love the cranberry, that's a nice addition.

These milkshakes are just calling me.

What are the milkshake flavors?

Yeah, we have a lot of fun with the milkshakes.

So here we have our All I Want, which is a sugar cookie styled, of course, as an ornament.

We have eggnog, local ice cream, sugar cookie blended inside, of course, some toppings as well for the seasonal vibes.

And then here we have our Christmas Memories with a keepsake.

You can put that and dress your tree as well with the keepsake in the front.

With a mint chocolate chip cookie, mint chocolate chip ice cream, and of course rock candy and some other delicious flavors on the side Oh my gosh that's amazing.

Ok so i could see why now alot of people make Craftsman Row part of their holiday tradition You probably should too because this looks amazing Allright guys, that is our show.

Thank you so much for watching, Thank you so much for having us.

Thank you!

Have a good night everybody!