![Join WSPN’s Marissa Mendoza, Edge Wheeler, Ainsley Jay, Bowen Morrison and Sofia Ciciarelli as they cover seniors’ involvement in the election and the viewpoint from a WHS educator. “[The election is] a really toxic environment,” WHS history teacher Katherine Bassen said. “It would be disingenuous for me to say, ‘oh, everything's going great.’ Obviously it's not, right?”](https://waylandstudentpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/IMG_0282-1-1200x800.jpg)
![The Boy Scouts will be selling trees on Fridays from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m., Saturdays 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Sundays noon to 6 p.m. until they sell out.
“This event is one of the things that [the Boy Scouts] get to have a direct impact on the community,” freshman Alex Macleod said.](https://waylandstudentpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Screenshot-2024-12-11-at-8.38.38 AM.png)
The Wayland Museum and Historical Society held their 44th annual Holiday Open House at the Grout-Heard House Museum from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Sunday, Dec. 8. The Holiday Open House is a multi-partnership event between the Wayland Free Public Library, the Wayland Town Depot and the First Parish Church. At the end of the evening, the Wayland First Parish performed a carol and the library hosted a sing along for children during the event.
During the Holiday Open House, volunteers gave tours of five rooms in the museums dedicated to families who lived in Wayland around the 18th and 19th century. The rooms are dedicated to the Draper, Heard, and Campbell families. The volunteers also showed the toy room and the south bedroom.
“People love to bake for [the Holiday Open House] while visitors who come here enjoy, sit and chat with neighbors and friends,” co-chair planner of the Holiday Open House Aida Gennis said. “This is a really big community event since it’s at one of the times in the year where people just come and enjoy the start of the winter season. They could run into friends and family that they haven’t seen in quite a while.”
Along with Gennis, Joanne Berry helped organize the event. This year, Gennis and Berry worked alongside Executive Director of the Wayland Museum and Historical Society, Scarlett Hoey, to plan the Holiday Open House. Hoey was appointed as the first executive director of the Historical Society on Nov. 26.
“[The Holiday Open House] is a really lovely way to take ownership of history and say that this is history for everybody,” Hoey said. “History is a really powerful tool to teach ways to think about moving forward and creating a more just future.”
The Wayland Garden Club decorated rooms in the historical society with holiday themed greenery and bouquets. Once the Holiday Open House finished using the decorations, the garden club donated the decor to families and individuals in the Council of Aging.
“I think there are a lot of ways that you can enter into history using visual objects like a painting, [decorations] or a couch,” Hoey said. “It is one of those really exciting ways to kind of think about history and tie it to the present.”
Members of the Wayland High School orchestra also performed at the Holiday Open House. Midway through the event, the WHS A Cappella group “The Muses” sang Christmas carols. The volunteers brought treats for the guests to enjoy during the event.
“The Wayland Historical Society gathers [artifacts] from the past,” former curator and Historical Society President Jane H. Sciacca said. “People donate a lot of the items, but they have to be Wayland specific. The [artifacts] have to have been used here in Wayland or are used now.”
Through the Grout-House, the historical society hopes to show how members of Wayland’s middle class lived in the 18th and 19th centuries. The house of the historical society was once owned by the Grout-Heard family in Wayland.
“So what we, [the Wayland Historical Society], try to show here is how the middle class Wayland people lived,” curator of the museum and historical society Kay Gardener Westcott said. “Not the very rich, but the people who were middle class. The room is [decorated as a] different period just to show off how the house has progressed.”
