Celebrate cozy Christmas in lighthouse

SOMERSET, N.Y. — Spending the holidays at home is wonderful, but sharing Christmas with family in a 130-year-old lighthouse is a once-in-a-lifetime memory.

Twice we've packed up the car and driven the seven hours from our home in Rhode Island to a small town in rural western New York state, where my wife and I grew up, to spend unforgettable vacations at historic Thirty Mile Point Lighthouse on Lake Ontario. Our most recent stay was last summer to attend a high school reunion, but our first, and most memorable, was celebrating a cozy Christmas there with two of our adult children, my wife's brother and a family friend two holiday celebrations ago.

Six of us, single-file, lugged suitcases up a narrow, winding, wooden staircase to the living room. There, Christmas carols played from a radio, and in a corner next to a sun-drenched window sat a small but festive Christmas tree, brightly decorated by the lighthouse caretakers with lights and ornaments.

From the kitchen window, we could see and hear the winter waves from the lake pounding the shoreline while the morning sun glistened across the water. Some winters here, the lake can be heaped with snow and ice for 20 or 30 yards out from the shore and the sun will dance on the ice. This particular Christmas was chilly, but we saw snow only once, and it was magical — gentle flurries arriving, as if on cue, Christmas Eve as we returned to our lighthouse home from a candlelight worship service in the nearby village.

We cooked a hearty breakfast of pancakes, eggs and bacon on the small gas stove each morning and at night climbed into big soft beds in the three bedrooms — two with views of the lake. The issue of six people sharing one bathroom solved itself, since at least two of the guests were early risers who enjoyed sunrises and brisk morning walks.

In our comfy Christmas confines, schedules melted away. We did as much or as little as we cared to. Part of the charm was having no telephone and no cable, just a small TV set with twisted rabbit ears that could pick up a few fuzzy channels, the best reception coming from a Canadian station across the lake. There were no video games, no Internet, only a small eclectic collection of inviting books, old-fashioned board games, playing cards and the types of conversations that take a family back to simpler times.

Wrapped in warm blankets on the sofa, sipping glasses of wine, we explored a journal of handwritten accounts by previous guests who detailed their fun-filled days and romantic nights spent here. Some let their imaginations play as they wrote of scary, stormy nights when the wind howled and the old walls and floors creaked. Before we left, we penned our own memories on the pages.