Kiawah Property Owners Featured in The New York Times

The New York Times has included Kiawah Island Club Members Randy and Beth Russell in an article that appeared on Christmas Day about Christmas traditions spent at second-homes. A portion of the article is included below as well as a link to The New York Times' Real Estate Section with full story.

Taking Christmas on the Road, With or Without Reindeer
By JOANNE KAUFMAN

When it came to celebrating the holidays, Kathy Braddock had been nothing if not a creature of habit. For countless Christmases she spent the morning at her Manhattan apartment opening presents with her husband (the two divorced in 2000) and their two sons, then walked the block and a half to her mother’s house “to do Christmas there,” said Ms. Braddock, 52, a real estate consultant.

When her mother and stepfather bought a condo in Naples, Fla., as a winter escape, Ms. Braddock stuck firmly and faithfully to the Yuletide provender and purveyors favored by her mother: bagels and cream cheese from William Poll, coffee cake from Greenberg’s, pasta or cold cuts for dinner. And so it went for years.

Her mother died in Naples in February 2008, “and I’ve had this thing that I didn’t make the right choice of spending her last Christmas with her,” Ms. Braddock said. “I had been in Florida but went back to New York to spend the holiday with one of my sons.”

Consequently Ms. Braddock, who now shares ownership of the condo with her sister, decided this year to move her family’s Christmas celebration down south as a way of honoring her mother’s memory and to create a whole new slate of traditions (O.K., with maybe a few holdovers from New York — bagels, lox and whitefish salad and that great sticky-bottomed coffee cake from Greenberg’s).

Ms. Braddock and her sons, now 21 and 23, had a long debate whether the first-annual Naples Noel would involve a big or little tree — small won out. But they readily agreed that it would be decorated with ornaments representing three generations of the family.

As for Christmas dinner, from now on it’s going to be a barbecue.

“We have it all planned,” said Ms. Braddock, who is expecting a contingent of friends and family. “I’ve already ordered a swordfish, tuna, a rib-eye steak and tons of vegetables. I’ve also called the Swan River Market in Naples for raw seafood. That’s going to be part of the tradition too.”

Some, like Ms. Braddock, who choose to spend the holidays at their vacation home see it as a way to escape familiar, but frankly wearisome customs observed at their primary residences, whether a large party, a large tree or a large rib roast. Other second-home owners see the holiday rituals established at their home base as sacrosanct and stick with them no matter the inconvenience.

In McLean, Va., where Beth Russell is an entrepreneur and philanthropist, and her husband, Randy Russell, is a lobbyist, the holiday season is “a round of cocktail parties,” said Mrs. Russell, 46. “It’s hard to get into the Christmas spirit.” The artificial tree she bought pretty much says it all.

Seventeen years ago the Russells began renting a vacation getaway in Kiawah, S.C., (they’ve since bought a shingled beach house there), then in 1999 adopted a baby girl from China.

“Her first Christmas Eve here we took her to our favorite place on the beach on the most remote part of the Island,” said Mrs. Russell, who adopted another baby girl from China almost six years ago. “It was our way of connecting with her and the spirit of the holiday. We now do it every year.

“From the beginning, being here was all about doing things differently than in McLean,” continued Mrs. Russell, whose roster of doing things differently includes buying a live tree and, with the help of her daughters and husband, decorating it with found objects like pine cones, twigs and shells.

And on New Year’s Eve “we all write down the things we want to let go of and the things we hope for, then rip the paper into little pieces and throw them into the ocean,” she said. “It’s a message out to the universe. I would never think of doing anything like that in McLean.”

To read the story in full, visit http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/25/greathomesanddestinations/25holiday.html?_r=1&ref=escapes.