For many people, the most joyful season of the year is the holiday season of Christmas and New Year’s Day. It’s a time filled with the hustle and bustle of shopping, wrapping and decorating, cooking, company parties, and making plans to celebrate the arrival of a new year.

It’s a time of the year for the gathering of family and friends, fostering good will, and praying for peace on earth. There will be Christmas carols, visits with Santa for the little ones with wide-eyed wonder, toasting with eggnog, and holiday cheer to warm the cold dark days of late December.

The dawning of a new year will see funny hats, noisemakers, confetti, and resolutions for a better lifestyle in the days ahead.

How we celebrate the upcoming holidays is special to each of us in our own way. There is much similarity from home to home in the decorating of the Christmas tree and the gathering around it to open gifts on Christmas morning, in the plans and hopes for a new year and the promises it may bring. And yet, each family has their own traditions and special ways of making the season bright.

For John and Wendy Williams, of Norway, the festivities begin the Saturday after Thanksgiving with the annual search for the family Christmas tree.

Williams is the executive director of the Oxford Hills Chamber of Commerce, an ordained minister with the National Association of Congregational Christian Churches tending the West Bethel church, and, together with Wendy, owns and operates Williams Broadcasting, Inc., now in its 20th year.

“For 30 years we have gone as a family to various cut-your-own tree farms on the Saturday after Thanksgiving,” said Williams. “It is one of my favorite parts of Christmas and I am an absolute Christmas fanatic. Nothing gives me such joy as Christmas.”

Christmas Eve and Christmas day are a whir of family activity for the Williams couple. “After all the visits with family are over and things are quiet on Christmas Eve, I stay up as late as I can just to savor the moment,” said Williams. “And, of course, there is the annual roast beef dinner to look forward to on Christmas day.”

Christmas Eve will find Dundee Pratt and soul mate Pete Hodgdon, both of Norway, at his sister’s house for a family gathering, good food, good cheer, and a Yankee swap of movies.

Pratt is owner of Spare Closet Revisited, Harris Bros. Trash Removal, and she is on the board of directors of the Norway-Paris Solid Waste Committee, as well as a member and past-president of the Norway Business Association.

“On Christmas day, we’ll visit my late husband’s (Jim Pratt) family and watch the kids open presents and later in the day we’ll go to the Maine Vets Home to spend some time with Pete’s dad,” said Pratt. “But my favorite time I look forward to the most is New Year’s Day. It’s the one day of the year when I stay in my pajamas all day, watch movies, eat chips and dip, a shrimp ring, and just do absolutely nothing but relax.”

As friends and families come together to celebrate the season there will be reunions with grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, old friends, and, for some, the return of children home from college.

“My oldest son, Alex, will be graduating from the University of Maine in December and my youngest son, Phoenix, will be home on break from Colorado College. So, both of my boys will be home for Christmas along with a west coast friend,” said Debi Irons, renowned dancer and owner/instructor of Art Moves Dance Studio in Norway.

“Lately,” Irons continued, “our tradition has become getting the last Christmas tree at Youngs’ Greenhouse and taking as long as humanly possible to decorate it.

“We’ll go to my mother’s house in West Paris on Christmas Eve to visit with family and friends, but what I really look forward to is hours of doing nothing but hanging around the living room talking and laughing about nothing. That’s when we know we’re home – no matter where in the world we are.”

For some, being home for the holidays and spending time with family is a balancing act when their profession demands their attention elsewhere. Such is the case for Rev. Don Mayberry, pastor of the First Congregational Church of South Paris.

“Our Christmas celebration begins at the church with the start of Advent on November 28 when we do the Hanging of the Greens and have a 4 p.m. service,” said Mayberry. “The church family looks forward to celebrating the season with each other through worship and the Christmas music. It is a beautiful and spiritual time.”

Mayberry’s time will be in short supply with 7 p.m. and 11:30 p.m. services on Christmas Eve and a return on Sunday for the regular 10 a.m. worship service. But Christmas day is all about family with wife, Judy, and daughters, Sarah and Susie.

“We’ll be home on Christmas day and Judy and I will take our daily walk, which is a peaceful time for us, and we’ll gather with Judy’s parents in celebration of the day,” said Mayberry. “Christmas is a spiritual day, but you know, every day is a spiritual day – we just don’t always take note of it. The best part of Christmas is that it reminds us of the hopeful possibilities of peace on earth.”