Once again, Harkers Island, N.C., lights up for Christmas!

Hallelujah! Harkers Island is back on Our State magazine’s official list of “North Carolina Christmas towns.”

The 2024 Our State Christmas issue features an eight-page editorial spread about the revitalization of the Harkers Island holiday lights, written by freelance journalist Ryan Stancil and illustrated with 11 color photographs shot by Baxter Miller. (Several are shown here, compliments of Our State.)

Down East Carteret County locals are still beaming at the sight of full-page images of the “now ubiquitous” Harkers Island anchor and a 25-foot Christmas tree built from multi-colored crab pots that is decorated with an assortment of buoys. The sturdy “tree with personality” welcomes visitors and guests to the Core Sound Waterfowl Museum & Heritage Center on Harkers Island.

 

Sprinkled among the narrative are photos of America’s original crab pot Christmas trees, built from durable, weather-proof, PVC-coated crab trap wire. Created and patented in 2004 by Nicky Harvey, owner of Harvey and Sons in Davis, the unique crab pot trees are handcrafted at the Fisherman Creations Inc. workshop in nearby Smyrna.

 

In his article, Stancil explains that a renewed Christmas spirit on Harkers Island and throughout the Down East region has been sparked by folks like Emma Rose Guthrie (known as “Emmer”) and Della Brooks.

For generations, the Christmas season has been a festive time for families who have lived at the water’s edge. Emmer Guthrie said she remembered her family would go out in search of the “perfect Christmas tree” on Christmas Eve.

“We’d go along the shore to the cemetery and find a real pretty little cedar tree,” she told Stancil. “Daddy bought pancake syrup in gallon buckets, and we’d take one of them empty buckets, fill it full of heavy sand, wrap paper around it to hide the bucket, and stick the tree in it. We’d make paper chains and cut out Stanta faces at school. We’d hang oyster shells, clam shells, scallop shells – anything we could find – on the tree. Never had any lights.”

Electrification arrived on Harkers Island in 1939, when the utilities company ran an underwater cable over from Beaufort. Everybody’s first light bill was $2.50, Emmer Guthrie said. The whole place lit up for Christmas that year.

When the first bridge opened in 1941, connecting Harkers Island to the mainland at Straits, people would drive for miles just to see the Harkers Island holiday lights. Times changed, however, over the course of the next 60 or so years. The lights seemed to grow dimmer with each passing decade.

In 2015, a grassroots “Bring Back the Lights” committee came together to see what it could do to “get the spirit going again.” The group groped for a “hook” or a symbol to rally the homeowners. It was Emmer Guthrie who suggested an “anchor.” She said the anchor “represents our fishing heritage” and celebrates the birth of Jesus at Christmas, who is the anchor of Christianity. Everyone agreed.

Richard Gillikin, a local boat captain, set out to design the anchor, and Andy Scott, who is a commercial fisherman and marine fabricator, volunteered to produce them – made from a shiny marine-grade aluminum.

 

Sold exclusively through the Core Sound museum’s gift shops, the anchors are available in two sizes: large (34” x 30”) and small (21.5” x 20.5”).

Stancil said that in 2024, “undecorated homes on Harkers Island are now the exception at Christmastime.” The lights that glow from one end of the island to the other now “shine as a testament to what a small group of people – bound by tradition, determination and a little Christmas cheer can do together.”

“On Harkers Island…the anchor holds.”

 

 

Our State selects 7 more N.C. ‘towns that twinkle’ at Christmas

The “Photo Essay” in the December 2024 issue of Our State magazine turned the spotlight on seven communities across North Carolina that “celebrate the holiday season with sparkling lights, vibrant displays and festive events that bring joy to the world.

Working from west to east, these communities are:

Forest City in Rutherford County, McAdenville in Gaston County, Mocksville in Davie County; Pinehurst in Moore County, Cary in Wake County, New Bern in Craven County and Morehead City-Beaufort in Carteret County.

Staff writer Rebecca Woltz said the Holiday Flotilla held each year in early December, hosted by the Friends of the North Carolina Maritime Museum in Beaufort, navigates from the Morehead City waterfront to Beaufort, “leaving much entertainment in its wake.”

(Flotilla photos by Charles Harris are shown below, compliments of Our State.)