A sweltering day in July! Thinking about Christmas. Christmas in July! Oh and what fun ceramics class were way back then. I made a few Nativity sets in my time, various sizes, each one a bit different from the others, almost all of them were gifts. One of which I have still have.

One which was designed for children and had every animal I could think of that may be welcome in a stable, cows and calves, horses and foals, mules geese, doves and dogs, chcikens and mules. Added extra characters, just because this one was intended for my child

The other contained some very ornate and antique looking figures, i was months perfecting it. More than once it has fooled people into thinking it was an antique. This one i gave to my parents. My Father built a stable for it and a stable for my child's also. In time my parents nativity set was passed on to me.

This all took place long before i had ever heard of Martha Stewart. I must confess I own almost every issue of "Martha Stewart Living" and faithfully watched and learned from her TV series. On a rainy or snowy and grey afternoon, i still page thru a couple MSLs, i dunno, it just lifts my spirits. Thanks Martha

Martha Stewart is sharing the story behind her now-iconic nativity scenes.

"Well, I was at this very lovely federal camp down in Alderson, West Virginia," Stewart, 81, told host Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show Thursday.

"They had a ceramics class. And I chose to spend my evenings making ceramics."

As Fallon began to laugh at Stewart's euphemism for where she resided from 2004-2005, he told her to plug her ears for one second.

"Prison," he told the audience in New York City, to which Stewart replied, "You can think of other ways to say it, you know, you don't have to say the 'P' word!"

Stewart then relayed the story of how she came to make the nativity pieces, the replicas of which are now sold on her website, Martha.com.

The lifestyle guru said she found "something like 15 pieces" of suitable molds in the prison store that could be used to make a complete crèche, but came up against a prison rule that says "You're allowed to make three things."

Her solution was simple yet ingenious: "I persuaded the warden that 15 pieces was one thing," she told Fallon.

When Fallon displayed the original version Stewart made of Joseph while in prison, she warned him to be careful handling it, before showing him a special detail.

"Look in the bottom," she said, as Fallon began to laugh. "That's my [prison] number!"

Last year, while displaying a 14-piece white-glazed Nativity scene sold on her website, Stewart had another way to describe the ceramic pieces she created while serving her sentence.

"If you'd like to give a really beautiful and special gift this Christmas, with a little street cred, they're all inspired by — guess what — a set that I made when I was confined," Stewart said in a TikTok clip, adding: "These are exact replicas of a Nativity scene I made in my pottery class when I was away at camp."

Martha Stewart arrives at the federal courthouse in New York. Peter Foley/Bloomberg/Getty

The TV personality has displayed the crèche in her home since 2005, after she served five months in prison for conspiring with her Merrill Lynch stockbroker to deceive authorities probing her December 2001 sale of stock.

She reminisced with PEOPLE in 2020 about making the Nativity set and the other creative outlets she turned to while incarcerated..

"Even when I went away for five months, I got through it. I learned how to crochet. I still have the gorgeous crocheted poncho [that I wore leaving prison]. It's in the attic. And I re-upped my ceramics there," Stewart said in November 2020.

"I had done a lot of ceramics as a child, and we had this fabulous ceramics studio in West Virginia, and I made an entire crèche scene. That's my best memory."

Anna Lazarus Caplan

Published on November 18, 2022 11:24AM ES

Christmas in July Started at This Girls' Summer Camp in 1935

The tradition was first described as being full of "mystery and wonder."

Martha Stewart |

Does anything ring quite as sweetly in the ears as two Christmases per year? For one girls' camp in Transylvania County, North Carolina, it's not an untouchable fantasy, but a magical reality.
Welcome to Christmas in July—it's as wonderful as it sounds.
The unorthodox celebration originated at Keystone Camp on July 24, 1935, complete with gift exchanges, Santa Claus and cotton imitation snow. From there, it was an annual tradition that remains ingrained in camp policy today.
"As a child, the day was quite elaborate, with candlelight caroling by our counselors-in-training on Christmas Eve," Camp Director Page Lemel says. "We would hang an empty laundry bag on our doors to be filled with candy after we went to bed. Santa would make his appearance in the afternoon for our Sunday afternoon program. The campers would come down in pajamas or dressed all in red and green. We would have cookies and hot cocoa (a little warm for mid-July), and Santa, Mrs. Claus, elves and reindeer would arrive in the back of a red pickup truck."

Photography by: Keystone Camp

And of course, there was the Christmas tree — which, according to Lemel, would adorn the camp pavilion.
"Once Santa and Mrs. Claus were seated, presents would be passed out to each camper," she says. "The week before we would draw someone else's name and gifts would be made in the camp craft shop. In recent years, the candlelight caroling lost out to a Saturday night dance with a boys' camp that would get us back to camp too late."

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Photography by: Keystone Camp

The festivities of the additional Christmas included classic holiday games, such as pass the parcel and caroling competitions. Lemel says the celebration is all-encompassing in the present day.
"As we became more ecumenical with our camper population, Christmas and Hanukkah began to share the time, and as the camp schedule changed to shorter sessions, we did not have a full week to devote to present-making," she says. "Thus, the spirit of the day remains, but the celebration is more general."

Surprisingly, Christmas at Keystone is something campers and camp administration alike have always taken for granted.
"I think we are all stunned to have so much interest in the tradition this year when it has never been on the radar before," Lemel says. "We have now been contacted by four national media outlets. Last summer, we turned 100. We are the oldest private summer camp in the south, and we could hardly generate interest in that milestone, so the interest in Christmas is quite something!"
The spirit of Christmas, it seems, lives year-round... especially here.
Feeling the Christmas spirit? Watch how to make a tinsel-inspired silver fringe tree:

Words and pictures

Saturday, July 12, 2025