My great-grandfather brought the Wilson family to Mount Kisco in 1890, answering the call to lead St. Mark’s Episcopal Church during the horse-and-buggy days on Main Street.
This fall, 134 years later, I am a regular at St. Mark’s parish hall. There, I led a team that created dozens of woven wooden stars, a selection of which are illuminated on the busy corner at East Main and Route 133 during the holidays.
From left to right, David McKay Wilson talks with Rev. Kyle Martingale at the Stars of Hope exhibit at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Mount Kisco, Nov. 27, 2024. Wilson, a columnist at Journal News/lohud, started the project five years ago. This is the second year at S. Mark’s.
The Stars of Hope program, which I launched during the darkness of the COVID pandemic in 2020 at St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church in Staatsburg in Dutchess County, arrived on Mount Kisco in 2023 with five stars at the historic church.
Stars of Hope 2020 –
Last year I sold 53 stars and had them shine in eight Episcopal congregations in the Diocese of New York.
This year we have added six more stars to St. Mark’s, spreading our exhibition south. That’s across the street from Mount Kisco Village Hall, and the tall pine tree that will be lit during the village’s tree lighting and food drive on Friday, December 6 at 6 p.m. We will join in the festivities that evening with a tent on our church lawn, with hot cider and stars of various sizes for sale – from 14-inch Christmas tree toppers to 10-footers for a window and 7-foot stars for an outdoor display.
St. Margaret’s also makes stars
St. Margaret’s, meanwhile, has kept the Stars program alive under the leadership of David McNary, the church’s senior director, who has assembled a team to create about 35 stars from his garage in Hyde Park this fall. Under the Merry & Bright tent at the Hyde Park Town Hall tree lighting on Sunday, St Margaret’s sold seven stars and his team have orders for seven more stars. They are also available at the St. Margaret’s Soup Sale on December 21st at 10am
This year his team focused on 24-inch stars, which fit nicely in a window. He also makes 5-footers and just got an order for 4 new ones. Before Thanksgiving, McNary said he harvested enough wood from the hardwood forest behind his house for ten small and five large stars.
“Maybe we still have some harvest to do,” he said.
David McNary, senior director of St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church in Staatsburg, stands with two Stars of Hope that he woven from wood cut in Hyde Park.
McNary enjoys weaving the freshly cut wood to form the sturdy pentagram, using four sticks of the same length and the fifth stick a few inches longer to create the final weave. McNary says he can make one in 30 minutes, complete with properly set up lights. While my design uses fabric cord, it secures the branches with zip ties to secure the branches.
“When it’s done and you turn it on, it’s a good feeling,” he said. “It’s one of those little joys of my time.”
Stars of hope 2023
The five-pointed star
The star program examines the five-pointed star, a symbol that resonates in cultures dating back 5,000 years to the Babylonians. The Greeks embraced the pentagram, while early Christians saw the five-pointed star as a symbol of Christ’s crucifixion.
If you look closely, the star is the human form: two feet, two arms, a head and a heart. In Vermont’s Mad River Valley, where I was first inspired by the shape, it is a sign of community unity commemorating the deaths of five teenagers in the region in 2017. New England farmers have used them as sign hung on their barns of happiness.
Stars also shine in the Bible – from the first to the last chapter. Stars arrive in the first chapter of the Book of Genesis in the creation story, with God creating the stars on Day 3 and preparing the world of humanity, which arrives on Day 5. Flash forward to the last chapter of the Bible in the Book of Revelations. In his last words, Jesus declares, “I am the bright morning star.”
The Stars of Hope are displayed outside Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church on East Main Street in Mount Kisco, Nov. 27, 2024. David McKay Wilson, a reporter with the Journal News, started the Stars of Hope art project five years ago. This is the stars’ second year at Saint Mark’s.
At St. Mark’s, our team of three made 25 stars in mid-November from branches I collected from various locations—birch from my stepmother’s forest in Connecticut, elm branches from trees in my backyard, a summer fallen oak in Somers, and willows in the meadow of St. Mark’s parish on Guard Hill in Bedford.
Marlene Sauer and Eileen Marx, parishioners of St. Mark, joined me for an afternoon workshop in the parish hall in early November. I had divided the wood into groups of five and we worked together, learning how to weave and tie the stars.
Dance instructor Brook Diamond leads his partner in a social dance at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church on Nov. 23, 2024, with the Stars of Hope illuminated in the parish hall windows.
They dazzled at our monthly social dance in late November in the parish hall with St. Mark’s high ceiling and beautiful hardwood floor. Tripods made of birch wood glittered through the stained glass windows.
Get help hanging church lighting
The lights came on a week later, the week St. Mark’s hosted the Emergency Shelter Partnership. That’s the nonprofit coalition of 32 places of worship in central and northern Westchester that provides Spartan accommodations and a hot dinner for the homeless every week during the five coldest months of the year.
The Stars of Hope watched over the belongings of homeless men and women who were guests at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church while hosting the Emergency Shelter Partnership program in November. .
To mark their arrival, we had stars lit in the parish hall. One evening, one of our guests came and sat with me at the back of the hallway, stringing lights as he told me about his life on the margins and his hopes that better days would come.
That night we attached the lights to a dozen stars. And in the coming weeks they will shine brightly on East Main Street.
Those interested in being featured can email stmarksprojects@gmail.com
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David McKay Wilson writes about tax issues and government responsibility. Follow him on Twitter @davidmckay415 or email him at dwilson3@lohud.com.
This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Mount Kisco NY Stars of Hope Lights up East Main Street for Holidays
