The capstone of the Christmas season, and indeed the most enviably decorated house in The Suffolk County News’s coverage area, is the Meadow Croft estate in December.

Lovingly and painstakingly designed and executed by the Bayport-Blue Point Heritage Association, Christmas at Meadow Croft is a grand affair with an intimate interpretation of theme. This year’s theme, which was decided on at the end of last year’s holiday season, was “Christmas by the Bay.”

Of course, Meadow Croft is a premier summer home, so its original inhabitants, John E. Roosevelt and family, would have spent their Christmas holiday in their principal home in Manhattan—a gorgeous Gramercy brownstone that has since been renovated to office space for the Theodore Roosevelt museum next door.

One of the multiple merry trees in the estate was made with homemade, nautically themed ornaments by BBPHA president, Mary Bailey.

Erich Haesche, a longtime member of the BBPHA who has completed a number of projects for the estate, decorated John E. Roosevelt’s dressing room with historical Christmas decorations that sparked quite a bit of interest with the eventgoers, ostensibly vintage buffs themselves.

Despite Saturday, Dec. 3 being filled with rain and blustering wind (that canceled a few other holiday events in the area), over 200 people came to Meadow Croft, with over double that number coming the next day.

“Families come from all over Long Island,” said Bailey. “Many have been coming for years.”

The nursery of Meadow Croft, which, as of late, has been used as an office, was decorated in preparation of its return to a childhood haunt with the theme, “Christmas Morning.”

Leanne Maher Berg, vice president of the BBPHA, utilized, to great effect, antique toys donated by four-generation Bayport family the Dietzes, for the decorations.

Housed in that collection is an impressive horde of handmade dollhouse furniture, which Bailey said “was American Girl doll before there was American Girl.”

Although there are possible delays in material shipping (i.e. the wallpaper from Bradbury and Bradbury for the dressing room took over six months), the restored nursery is expected to be open to the public by June, when the summer tours at Meadow Croft begin.

With the current color palette, wallpaper, and bookshelves, the nursery is currently shrouded in darker themes, but Bailey promised that the new nursery will be “light and feminine.”

Generous raffle baskets were donated to the BBPHA for the Christmas at Meadow Croft event and included a champagne bottle with Meadow Croft engraved from Lake Liquor; $1,500 worth of will-writing services from attorney Annette Lanteri; and a whopping 80-pound beer basket from the Prezioso family.

Two raffle winners drove all the way from Huntington and Shoreham to claim their prize.