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2 days ago | Advertorial | Paula Whitcomb

“34 winters I’ve lit this window. This is the last one.” – Why 68-year-old Earlene is selling her Homelight Reindeer online – for the first and last time

In a weathered boat shed on the Damariscotta River in Maine, Earlene Mabry has bent little golden reindeer out of wire for 34 Christmases. Now her hands have had enough – and her best-loved piece, the glowing Homelight Reindeer, is being offered one final time.

Damariscotta, November. At the bottom of Earlene Mabry’s yard, where the lawn runs out and the river begins, stands a gray-shingled boat shed. Inside it smells of wood smoke, coffee and cold salt air. Coils of gold-colored wire hang from nails along the walls. On the shelves stand little reindeer in every stage – some just a bare outline, some half-wrapped, some finished and glowing in the dim light. On the workbench lie round-nose pliers, wire cutters, spools of hair-fine gold wire and tangles of tiny warm-white lights. Earlene sits at the same bench where she has started every morning since 1992, a half-finished reindeer in her hands. But this year is different. It is her last Christmas season.

“I’ll be 69 in the spring,” she says, turning the little reindeer in the lamplight. “My fingers don’t bend the way the wire does anymore. Some mornings it takes an hour before they warm up, and the arthritis isn’t getting any better.” She flexes her hands and smiles. “And it’s not only my hands. People don’t buy things made by hand the way they used to. Everything comes off a ship in a container now. What I do is slowly disappearing.”

34 Christmases, more than 3,000 reindeer – and it all started with one light in a window

Earlene keeps count in a spiral notebook on the shelf above the bench: more than 3,000 reindeer in 34 years, every one of them shaped by her own hands. “It started with one,” she says. “Dale, my husband, was fishing out of New Harbor back then, and in winter he’d come home long after dark. So I bent a little reindeer out of leftover wire, wound a string of lights through it and set it in the front window. He could see it from the road and he knew the kettle was on.”

The neighbors saw it too. The next December, half the street wanted one for their own window. “That’s how the Homelight Reindeer was born. Not something big and loud for the yard – a little light that tells somebody they’re home.”

What makes Earlene’s Homelight Reindeer so special

First, it’s small – about 6.7 inches tall, made for a windowsill, a mantel, a dresser or a step beside the door. That’s exactly the point. Earlene never wanted to build something that shouts. She wanted something that glows.

Each reindeer starts as a sturdy outline that Earlene bends from gold-toned wire with her pliers: the long neck, the turned head, the round body, the slender legs and the looped antlers. Then she wraps the whole shape by hand in hair-fine gold wire, round and round and crisscross, until it looks like golden lace – so light and open that you can look right through it. Woven into the wire is a string of tiny warm-white lights, dozens of little points that make the reindeer glow from inside like a lantern. One slim wire runs to a small battery box (3 AA batteries, not included) that hides behind it, with a switch right on the box – no outlet, no extension cord, no tangle. Standing, it measures about 6.7 inches tall and 3.6 inches from front hoof to back hoof.

The result is more than just another Christmas decoration. It is a small, steady glow in the window that says: come on in, you’re home.

“Some of my reindeer have stood in the same window for more than 20 Christmases”

Earlene lifts a shoebox down from the top shelf. Inside are hundreds of Christmas cards and letters, held together with rubber bands. “People write to me every year. Some of them since the nineties,” she says, and pulls out a card from 2004: “Dear Earlene, our reindeer went into the front window again tonight. My son is driving up from Hartford tomorrow, and I know he’ll see it from the end of the road. It’s still as bright as the year we bought it.”

There is a simple reason for that: patience instead of speed. A factory turns out thousands in an hour. Earlene makes one at a time, and each one takes her about six hours – bending the outline, wrapping every inch, threading the lights and testing it in the dark corner of the shed before it is packed.

Why this Christmas is the last one

At the end of November, Earlene will lock the boat shed for the last time. “There’s nobody to hand it on to. Young people don’t want to sit with pliers all winter, and it takes years before your hands really know the wire.” 147 Homelight Reindeer are still standing in rows on the shelves. Her life’s work. The last batch that will ever leave her bench.

To make sure they end up in the right homes, she has made a decision: a clear special price on every single one. “I’m not trying to get rich at the finish line. I want them in windows and on mantels where somebody is glad to see them light up – with people who know what handwork is worth,” Earlene says. “My grandkids Maddie (23) and Colt (28) are doing the selling online. I can barely work the TV remote,” she adds with a laugh. “They’ll keep shipping after I lock up, until the very last one is gone.”

Colt also gave the reindeer its name. “He said, Gram, it isn’t a decoration, it’s a home light. You switch it on so people know you’re home.” The name stuck. And for many customers it has become a small evening ritual: when the dark comes in, the reindeer goes on – and the house feels like somebody is waiting.

Why customers love Earlene’s Homelight Reindeer:

What customers are saying about the Homelight Reindeer

“The present that made my mother cry – in a good way”

Her customer Janice T. (52) from Rockland tells it like this: “My mother has lived alone since Dad passed, three hours away from me. I sent her two Homelight Reindeer for her kitchen window. She called me the night they arrived and said: now when I switch them on, it feels like you’re all on your way. I never thought a little reindeer could mean that much.”

Where can you get Earlene’s Homelight Reindeer?

Earlene’s Homelight Reindeer is only available through Backroad Goods – an online shop that works with selected makers who still do things by hand. Maddie and Colt look after Earlene’s own small corner of the shop there. Only there will you get the original Homelight Reindeer from her boat shed. Mass-produced wire reindeer have started to show up on Amazon and other big sites. At first glance they may look similar, but they have nothing to do with Earlene’s work.

This Christmas – and then never again

Earlene plans to close the shed for good at the end of November. “By Christmas Eve I’d like every one of them to be glowing in somebody’s window. After that, that’s it,” she says, and looks out at the river. “34 years. I’ve been lucky.”

If you would like one of the original Homelight Reindeer from Earlene’s last batch, don’t wait too long. With the special price and this much interest, the remaining reindeer are not expected to last. Maddie and Colt will keep shipping after the shed is closed – but only until the last one is gone.

It is the last chance to put a piece of real Maine handwork in your window – before Earlene’s little golden reindeer are gone for good.

Our verdict

The Homelight Reindeer is the kind of decoration people end up loving more than they expected. Bent and wrapped by hand in Earlene’s boat shed, it brings a small, warm light to the windowsill, the mantel or the front door – the kind of light that makes a house look lived in.

A small piece with a big heart – carefully made, sturdy, simple to use – and every evening a little moment of magic when the lights come on at dusk. Thank you, Earlene!

Readers share their Homelight Reindeer