Open House

"That statue's been rearranged three times this morning," says Martha Oakes, museum director.

In a forgiving holiday humor, Slifer only laughs at Flanagan's artistic ambush as they continue in the community effort to decorate the 1782 Georgian-style house for Christmas. "The fun part is, it's such an improvisation," says Slifer. "Happy things happen."

The house was built for feminist philosopher and writer Judith Sargent (1751-1820) and her first husband, John Stevens. Sargent championed equality, justice, and opportunity for all, so the house has always been a place of cooperation and innovation. It has even been a rectory. After Stevens's death, the young widow married the Rev. John Murray (1741-1815), the founder of Universalism in America, whose 1805 church (now a Unitarian Universalist Church) still stands across the street, its Federalist spire, then as now, a beacon for mariners.

The house, which opened as a museum in 1919, has become a repository for important portraits of the early Universalists as well as for Sargent family artifacts, including a number of paintings by John Singer Sargent (1856-1925), whose father was born in Gloucester.

Inclusiveness, a guiding principle for Sargent and Murray, is also a priority for Oakes. Rather than appoint members to a committee, she places a notice in the local newspaper inviting aspiring decorators to help prepare the museum for the Middle Street Walk. Held each year on the second Saturday of December, the event celebrates the historic neighborhood. Middle Street is closed to traffic to make room for pedestrians, horse-drawn wagons, and English-handbell ringers.

Because the museum is decorated for just one day, volunteers can go all out with fresh materials, arriving with evergreens, fruit, and yards of orange zest.

While the museum aims for historical accuracy, circa 1790, it is not rigid or exclusionary when it comes to holiday offerings. Talented amateur florists often leave flower arrangements at the door like foundlings, sometimes including scarlet poinsettias, which would not have been available in Judith Sargent's time. But the plants are put to good use. More often, though, the materials used to deck the museum halls are from no farther away than the arborvitae and boxwood on the property, which is above Gloucester's West End with a view to the harbor.

"It's a good time to trim them anyway," Flanagan says of the museum's shrubs. She's moved on to the dining room, making micro-adjustments of pine cones and sea grass in a Canton bowl. The table is set for tea, a meal chosen because all that the museum owns of the Sargent silver is the pudding spoons.

As if to compensate for the lack of cutlery, the table is laid out with decorative orange kumquats and yellow baby squash from Henry's Market in Beverly. While a supermarket might not be in historic character, the exotic produce is. Gloucester, being a seaport, would have had access to a variety of tropical fruits, including the pineapples, oranges, and pomegranates tucked into displays around the house.

Some fruits, though, are regional, such as the heirloom Lady apples that line the fireplace mantel, over which hangs a seascape by another local favorite, Gloucester artist Fitz Hugh Lane (1804-1865).

In the front parlor, newly restored with glazed finishes on the paneled wainscot, the faux-marble fireplace sports no stockings hung with care. ("This is not a Victorian Christmas," says Oakes).

But the fireplace is not bare. Cranberries, holly, and orange slices dried to an aromatic crispness and tied with bits of red raffia combine to create a holiday atmosphere.

While the decorations differ from year to year, depending upon who responds to the notice in the newspaper, the museum has some traditional mainstays. Topiaries fashioned from sprigs of boxwood are festooned with garlands of orange peel, an amazing feat of fruit dexterity performed by museum board member Roger Pheulpin. After he removes a thin layer of skin with his zester in long spirals, everyone joins together pressing cloves into the artfully scored fruit, which is then placed at nose level on mantels and shelves.

Every volunteer brings his or her own special gift to the decorating experience, from zesting oranges to wiring apples to making wreaths. But other less-tangible virtues -- such as the good will shown even in the face of adversity and red-twig dogwoods -- are as vital to the cause. Judith Sargent and John Murray would have wanted the house decorated in no other way.

The Sargent House Museum, 49 Middle Street, Gloucester, 978-281-2432 (www.sargenthouse.org), is open to the public from Memorial Day to Columbus Day. The house will be open for the Middle Street Walk on December 13 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. For more information on the Middle Street Walk, call the Cape Ann Chamber of Commerce, 978-283-1601.

JoeAnn Hart is a freelance writer. She lives in Gloucester.