Villages

“There is Christmas spirit,” said Rick White, president of the East Hampton Kiwanis Club, after he received 40 trees deemed too small by East Hampton Village to offer as part of the club's Christmas tree sale, which helps fund scholarships for local high school seniors, a holiday toy drive, and a donation to Katy’s Courage, among other causes.

Praise the mozzarella sticks and pass the pool cue! The Sail Inn in Montauk’s dock area has been sold to the mother-son team of Colleen Croft and Luca Guaitolini, who also own the upscale Upper East Side restaurant Elio’s, but the new owners say they are not planning to go luxe on the longtime locals’ joint on West Lake Drive when it reopens in the spring.

Demonstrating a supply issue that dates back to 2008, Canadian grower’s first shipment to Fowler’s Garden Center had no larger trees, so it offered East Hampton Village smaller ones at a discount. Now it will provide larger trees of a more expensive variety for the same price. “We don’t do this to make money,” said Rick Fowler. “This is our way to give back to the community.”

East Hampton Village has big plans for the holiday season, including a tree-lighting at the Hook Mill sponsored by Prada and Santa arriving by helicopter in Herrick Park, but those tiny trees that went up last week? Not planned.

For lovers of bay scallops, hope gave way to disappointment for a fourth consecutive year, with scattered finds in East Hampton Town and New York State waters since they were opened to the annual harvest.

The abnormally low water table coupled with the spread of invasive species are combining to threaten the long-term health of the East End’s coastal plain ponds.

It’s hard to decouple the turkey from Thanksgiving, but long before we paired turkeys with mashed potatoes and stuffing and turned them into a national symbol, they were going about their business, hanging out in gangs, flipping leaves, and browsing the ground for nuts.

One day in 1972, “very little happened at the East Hampton Town Board’s unusually short meeting.”

This Bonac Beachcomber came out the day before Thanksgiving in 1949, but instead of holiday festivities or football coverage, the focus was on a class debate and a 15th birthday party.

Santa has a brand-new helper this year. Her name is Ashley Anne Boer, she drives a Jeep Wrangler, and she just may have a solution to a perennial dilemma that shoppers face.

After three weeks of fund-raising, an online auction dubbed Feed the East End raised more than $10,000 for food pantries in East Hampton, Sag Harbor, and Montauk; sponsorships boosted the total to over $15,000.

It happened here, Star fans . . .