Christmas in Nashua

'Tis true that Christmas Day is over, however, this week is still holiday time. So, in keeping with the season this post features holiday decorations seen in downtown Nashua and within the halls of Clocktower Place, the mill apartment building where we live. These escaped an earlier posting; I opted not to hold off for a Christmas in July post. 

Come along for a look at decorations in downtown Nashua and our residence building before all of Christmas disappears until at least next October. (It gets earlier very year.) This is a long photo-laden post with a multitude of decos.

The city of Nashua, NH, doesn't have a large downtown with more restaurants than retail stores. There are some other businesses: several barber shops, a tobacco shop, craft store, two thrift stores, a Persian rug store, pharmacy, two jewelry stores and a couple of boutiques. We walked downtown, a week before Christmas on an overcast day, and saw these holiday decorations.

Capturing store window displays is always problematic because of reflections. The use of a polarizing filter can help minimize or eliminate many of these. However, my camera doesn't have the capability for add-on filters. The mouse figurines below were featured in a jewelry store display. Yes, they are very small.

Santas and snowmen were featured in several of the storefront windows, along with a few elves. 

Santas in a barbershop, pharmacy and restaurant

Snowmen and elves in rug and jewelry storefronts

Clocktower Place apartments encompasses two 5-story buildings that house a total of 325 apartment homes. Many of these featured exterior door wreaths, some included live greenery.

Some wreaths in Clocktower Place, none of these had live greenery

Live trees are no longer allowed inside the apartments due to safety regulations. When we first moved here 8 years ago there were no such restrictions. Ironically, a couple of years ago when we were planning to have a cut tree, the policy changed (bah humbug indeed). 

Trees displayed in the two lobbies at Clocktower Apartments

Trees displayed outside individual apartments

Decorations included outside some apartment entries had a single theme, others had Santas, snowman, gnomes, and Nativities. Here's a sampling of some.

Santas in various forms of dress

The reason for the season was displayed outside some apartments

In recent years, gnomes have become very popular holiday decorations. The tradition of gnomes at Christmas is derived from Scandinavia. Unlike elves, gnomes were thought to come out on Christmas day, but these appeared much earlier.

Gnome place like home ? 

Like gnomes, snowman have become increasingly popular as holiday decorations. And, while they are associated with the entire winter season, many are displayed only at this holiday.

Snowmen found no white Christmas in Nashua this holiday

Decorations outside our apartment ⬇ featured most of the usuals from the past several years. The penguin and frog were joined by Santa and a couple of elves.

Decorations outside our apartment entry

Because of limited space we didn't put up a tree inside the apartment this year. We bought an artificial one, the same year that cut ones were permanently banned. It stayed in storage and the New England holiday village was set up adjacent to the living room windows. Grenville installed new LED lighting in all the houses and the covered bridges.

Dept 56 New England village by day and night

The village can be considered a winter scene when all the Santas and decorated trees are removed and that will most likely be done next week. It takes a week to carefully unpack and set everything in place so plans are to leave it up through all of January.

Santas, snowmen and penguins were included in our interior decorations on a more limited scale than previous years. Many others are stored with the tree which wasn't put up.

Snowmen & penguins are in our apartment year-round

Holiday cards displayed in our apt

There's been an absence of a Friday Funnies post for the past couple of weeks, so here's a few year-end holiday signs posted within Clocktower Place.

The wording on this ⬆ sign is part of the monologue rant that Clark Griswold delivers to relatives in the 1989 classic film, National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation as they try to leave his home. Some may remember this part, Where do you think you're going? Nobody's leaving. Nobody's walking out on this fun, old-fashioned family Christmas. No, no. We're all in this together. This is a full-blown, four-alarm holiday emergency here . . .(there is more and it can be found online).

The wording on this ⬆ sign is also from Christmas Vacation and is said by Clark's wife, Ellen, to her teenage daughter, Audrey, who's upset that both sets of grandparents staying over for the holiday. Only thing is the wording is wrong. The line from the film is: I don't know what to say, except it's Christmas and we're all in misery. Seems someone didn't know the film well.

Thanks to everyone for comments on our Christmas post. Your good wishes were appreciated. This week we're in our native NJ visiting family and friends before year end. We're home before New Year's Eve which we'll spend at home watching movies together 🥂.