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2 days ago | Advertorial | Mel Dunstan

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

In the old granite stables behind her house in Beechworth, Victoria, Leonie Batterham 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.

Beechworth, November. Behind Leonie Batterham’s house, past the lemon tree and the old wash-house, stand the stables – honey-coloured granite blocks laid in the 1860s, when the town was full of gold diggers. Inside it smells of eucalyptus, warm dust and strong tea. Coils of gold-coloured wire hang from old horseshoe 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 shade. On the workbench lie round-nose pliers, wire cutters, reels of hair-fine gold wire and tangles of tiny warm-white fairy lights. Leonie 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 autumn,” she says, turning the little reindeer in the light from the doorway. “My fingers don’t bend the way the wire does any more. Some mornings it takes an hour before they loosen up, and the arthritis isn’t getting any better.” She flexes her hands and grins. “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

Leonie keeps count in an old exercise book 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. “Ray, my husband, was driving trucks up and down the Hume back then, and he’d get home well after dark. So I bent a little reindeer out of leftover fencing tie wire, wound a string of lights through it and stuck it in our front window. He could see it from the end of the street, and he knew the kettle was on.”

The neighbours 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 flashy for the front yard – a little light that tells somebody they’re home.”

What makes Leonie’s Homelight Reindeer so special

First, it’s small – about 17 centimetres tall, made for a windowsill, a mantelpiece, a chest of drawers or a spot by the front door. That’s exactly the point. Leonie never wanted to make something that shouts. She wanted something that glows.

Each reindeer starts as a sturdy outline that Leonie 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 criss-cross, 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 fairy 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 power point, no extension cord, no tangle. Standing, it measures about 17 centimetres tall and 9 centimetres 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”

Leonie lifts an old biscuit tin 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 Leonie, our reindeer went into the front window again tonight. Our son is driving up from Melbourne tomorrow, and I know he’ll spot it from the corner. 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. Leonie makes one at a time, and each one takes her about six hours – bending the outline, wrapping every bit of it, threading the lights and testing it in the darkest corner of the stables before it is packed.

Why this Christmas is the last one

At the end of November, Leonie will lock the stables for the last time. “There’s nobody to hand it on to. Young people don’t want to sit with pliers all year, 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 mantelpieces where somebody is glad to see them light up – with people who know what handwork is worth,” Leonie says. “My grandkids Jaz (23) and Brody (28) are doing the selling online. I can barely work the TV remote,” she adds with a laugh. “They’ll keep posting them out after I lock up, until the very last one’s gone.”

Brody also gave the reindeer its name. “He said, Nan, 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 light fades, the reindeer goes on – and the house feels like somebody is waiting.

Why customers love Leonie’s Homelight Reindeer:

What customers are saying about the Homelight Reindeer

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

Her customer Joanne T. (52) from Wodonga tells it like this: “Mum has lived on her own since Dad passed, three hours away from me. I sent her two Homelight Reindeer for her kitchen window. She rang me the night they turned up 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 Leonie’s Homelight Reindeer?

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

This Christmas – and then never again

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

If you would like one of the original Homelight Reindeer from Leonie’s last batch, don’t wait too long. With the special price and this much interest, the remaining reindeer are not expected to last. Jaz and Brody will keep posting them out after the stables have closed – but only until the last one is gone.

It is the last chance to put a piece of real country Victorian handwork in your window – before Leonie’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 Leonie’s stables, it brings a small, warm light to the windowsill, the mantelpiece 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, Leonie!

Readers share their Homelight Reindeer