Here Comes SANTA FE Chile wreaths, parades by candlelight, enchiladas two ways: the holiday season in New Mexico’s capital is unlike anywhere else. By Diane Tegmeyer Photographs by Miki Duisterhof 134 TOWN & COUNTRY www.storemags.com & www.fantamag.com Local actress Aimee Dale and her family at play at the San Miguel Mission, just steps from Santa Fe’s Plaza. Opposite: Lili and Lucien Dale pick out ristras, wreaths made with chiles, a Santa Fe tradition. www.storemags.com & www.fantamag.com A view of the Inn and Spa at Loretto, in the center of town. Below: Chef Charles Dale, the maestro behind the Encantado resort’s Southwestern-inspired Terra restaurant. IT IS THE second week of December, and my husband, Brooke, and I are lying in bed at Encantado, the year-old Auberge re- sort just outside Santa Fe, New Mexico, feeling like children getting an early Christmas present. During the night, a fine layer of fluffy snow has blanketed the Sangre de Cristo and Jemez mountains, adding a magical sparkle to the fifty-seven- acre former ranch in the upscale suburb of Tesuque. Not that snow is unheard of here, particularly around the holidays, when temperatures average a crisp forty-five degrees. It’s just that in the thirty years I have been visiting this New Mexican high desert, I’ve rarely seen powder on the swaths of brown sagebrush, nor have I spied a dark cloud hampering those end- less turquoise skies. In the past, at the end of our eight-hour drive to Santa Fe from our home in Aspen, Brooke and I made a habit of stopping at Ten Thousand Waves, a slightly funky Japanese-style spa with private outdoor hot tubs and unusual treatments, includ- ing a mask made of sanitized nightingale droppings. This time, however, we literally dumped our suitcases at reception and ran straight to a couple’s massage at Encantado’s spa. The 10,000-square-foot space—which, like the rest of the resort, em- phasizes contemporary elegance (stacked flagstone walls, floor- to-ceiling windows, acres of wood)—specializes in therapies that counterbalance the effects of the 7,000-foot altitude. We would begin our tour of the city, fully rested, in the morning. 136 TOWN & COUNTRY www.storemags.com & www.fantamag.com The firepit on the patio of Terra, at Encantado, warms guests during sunset cocktails. Below: Terra’s Valrhona- chocolate fondue with house- made marshmallows. A snow-dusted bronze elk stands sentry in the courtyard of the Gerald Peters Gallery. Above: Friends catch up before treatments at the Spa at Encantado. www.storemags.com & www.fantamag.com www.storemags.com & www.fantamag.com A pair of Forty Roses of Our Lady of Guadalupe cowboy boots, worn by boutique owner Nathalie Kent. Opposite: The Christmas spirit shines at Todos Santos Chocolates & Confections, a popular shop with a cult following. DECEMBER 2009 139 www.storemags.com & www.fantamag.com of people holding luminarias parade behind men and women dressed as Mary, her husband and the shepherds. (There used to be a donkey, too, but after it took off with Mary on its back a few times, the pregnant Madonna walks.) The pro- cession ends up at the Palace of the Governors, once the seat of Spanish government and now part of the New Mexico History Museum. Nearly every day of the year, on the huge porch of the early-17th-century palace, Native American artisans sell chunky turquoise jewelry and inexpensive crafts, which make great gifts. Though this sort of commerce is mainly for tour- ists, these residents of the Eight Northern Pueb- los, spread between Santa Fe and Taos, also welcome interested visitors to witness their hol- iday traditions, which often start a few days be- fore Christmas Eve. The celebrations typically blend animism with Catholicism, some times be- ginning with a Mass; the main attractions are the ritual dances incorporating buffalo headdresses, bows and arrows, and butterfly and eagle outfits. We won’t get to any of the pueblos this year, but Brooke and I do brave the snow on our first When snow blankets the city, Santa Feans day in town to see the $137 million Railyard, get outdoors. Here, a new commercial core taking shape about a Aimee Dale walks the quarter mile off the Plaza. Before construction family dog, Oscar, began, the area had little to offer other than Site outside town. Santa Fe, an art-installation center that com- pleted its expansion in 2007. Today the district We keep coming back to Santa Fe because Christmas here is has become a magnet for contemporary-art galleries. More im- like nowhere else. Instead of wrapping itself in ubiquitous red portant, it is the location of the year-round Saturday farmers’ and green, the historic city shimmers with luminarias, paper market, which our old friend Charles Dale, the chef at Encanta- bags filled with candles held in place by sand. Thousands of them do’s Terra restaurant, tells me has helped elevate dining through- line driveways, storefronts, even rooftops, casting rivers of light out Santa Fe. Brooke and I enter a warehouselike room filled with over the metropolis and taking the place of Christmas trees— ristras (wreaths made of red chile peppers), dried flowers, hand- though about a dozen are illuminated in the Plaza, the city’s cul- knit hats and rows of gourmet produce. We stop at a display over- tural and commercial hub. Because Santa Fe is a melting pot of flowing with bread, where the stout man running the stand tells Anglo-American, Hispanic and Native American cultures, the me how he migrated from Holland to Santa Fe and became a real holiday spirit is not so much in the decor but in the festivi- monk. Tiring of that, he says, he currently works as an artisanal ties. On Christmas Eve, cars are banned from parts of Canyon baker and is researching a new form of algae at a local university. Road, where almost half the city’s 240 art galleries are located, His history reminds me of another reason I love spending the as carolers take to the streets. The revelers break for midnight holidays in Santa Fe, nicknamed the City Different: the artistic Mass at the Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi, a French Romanesque eccentrics, who have all but disappeared from my hometown, are church built in 1887 that dominates the downtown cityscape. present in droves. Take Nathalie Kent, a former accessories edi- Earlier in the month, a pageant called Las Posadas (“the inns”) tor for French Vogue who moved here two decades ago and takes place. Following Hispanic tradition, the ritual revolves opened a boutique on Canyon Road that sells couture Western around the biblical story of Joseph and Mary searching for lodging wear, art and home furnishings. “As a child in northern France, I in Bethlehem. Gathering at the Plaza around 5:00 p.m., hundreds had Thursday afternoons off and would put a feather in › 158 140 TOWN & COUNTRY www.storemags.com & www.fantamag.com The festive storefront of Todos Santos. Right: On her office door, gallery owner Nedra Matteucci turns everyday iconography— coins, milagros, crosses—into masterly art. Necklaces of hand-rolled turquoise beads are sold at Packards on the Plaza. Left: Angels and other religious artifacts on display in Matteucci’s house, on Canyon Road. www.storemags.com & www.fantamag.com SANTA FE ESSENTIALS LAY OF THE LAND The thirty-five-year-old Luminaria My favorite lunch which are rotated regularly. New Mexico’s capital hotel, along with its spa and was at this recently opened 217 Johnson Street; 505-946- city was originally de- restaurant, completed its restaurant at the Inn and Spa 1000; okeeffemuseum.org. redesign this past February; at Loretto. Executive chef Museum of International Folk Art signed by its Spanish its 134 guest rooms now Brian Cooper cooks up such The whimsical museum has founders around a reflect a romantic palette Southwestern dishes as a the largest collection of folk central plaza, a one- of terra-cotta red, gold, smoked-turkey sandwich on art in the world. Check out the black and white. Doubles sourdough with avocado-and- aluminum-foil church from block square that still from $189. 211 Old Santa Fe tomato chutney and buffalo Poland, puppets from India serves as its down- Trail; 800-727-5531; inn sliders with chipotle aioli and miniatures from all town core. You’ll find atloretto.com. (Brooke’s pick). The decor is corners of the globe. 706 most of Santa Fe’s art Rosewood Inn of the Anasazi modern Southwestern: resin- Camino Lejo; 505-476-1200; galleries, museums The twenty-year-old, fifty- and-wicker chairs, tables built internationalfolkart.org. eight-room inn continues to from reclaimed barn wood, a Palace of the Governors Built in and restaurants on the deliver Southwestern charm, grand copper bar. During the the early 17th century as Plaza and the narrow with pueblo-style sandstone holidays, the restaurant really Spain’s seat of government, streets that radiate walls and artifacts reflecting puts on a show with three- this registered National all of Santa Fe’s cultures. The course prix fixe dinners on Historic Landmark is now from it. Tesuque is a new Anasazi Suite comes Christmas Eve and Christmas part of the state’s history suburb about seven with hardwood floors and two Day. 211 Old Santa Fe Trail; museum. Among its many miles north of the fireplaces to take the chill 505-984-7915; luminaria treasures is the Pancho Villa Plaza. There is little off those winter nights.