2 days ago | Advertorial | Carolyn Pruett

“My shoulder says this is my last Christmas in the workshop” – Ansel (74) is selling his last Christmas sleighs at a special price.

For 40 years, Ansel Pettengill has carved little Christmas sleighs in his New Hampshire workshop and engraved his wife Opal’s handwriting into every one. Now his shoulder is giving out. These are his last 196.

Littleton, November. The first snow is lying on the windowsill of the little workshop behind Ansel’s house, high above the Ammonoosuc River. Inside it smells of fresh wood dust, the iron stove and coffee that has been on the hot plate too long. Red sleigh runners hang from nails along the wall like candy canes. On the bench lie a carving gouge worn smooth by four decades, a jar of sharpened pencils and a stack of pale boards – some still blank, some already carrying Opal’s looping “Merry Christmas” in soft pencil. Ansel bends over one of them, the way he has every November since 1987. But this year is different. It is his last.

“I’m 74,” he says, and presses his left hand against his right shoulder. “Two years ago the doctor told me it’s worn through. Engraving is all shoulder. You lean in and you hold the line steady, for hours. Now I get twenty minutes, then the arm starts to shake and the letters go crooked.” He sets the tool down. “And a crooked Merry Christmas, I won’t send out. Not with Opal’s name on it.”

There is a second reason. “Our daughter lives in Asheville, North Carolina. The grandkids are there, and the winters are kinder. Opal and I said: one more Christmas here, then we go.”

40 Christmases, almost 9,000 sleighs – and it all started with a plate of cookies

Ansel has done the math. Since 1986 he has made almost 9,000 little sleighs, and every one of them has been through his hands. It began on Christmas Eve 1986. Opal had baked seven kinds of cookies, the plate was too small, and their daughter Carrie, six years old at the time, asked whether Santa’s sleigh could bring them to the table. “So I went out to the workshop that night,” Ansel says. “I carved a board, bent two runners and painted them red. Opal took a pencil and wrote Merry Christmas across the top, the way she writes it on every card. I cut her writing in, so it would never wash off. Then I go over every letter with a hot pen, so it shows up dark.”

The next Christmas, half the church wanted one. Opal still writes the words on every single board in pencil before Ansel engraves them. “Her handwriting, my hands,” he says. “That’s the whole recipe.”

What makes Ansel’s Christmas sleighs so special

It isn’t only Opal’s handwriting across the top, with its three little stars. It’s the way every sleigh is made: a small piece of Christmas that actually gets used every year – not one more decoration that spends eleven months in a box.

The board is solid bamboo, carved by hand into its soft, wavy shape, with edges rounded until they feel good in your hands. “Bamboo was Opal’s idea,” Ansel says. “Oak was too heavy to carry full of cookies, and bamboo doesn’t warp in a steamy kitchen.” Her “Merry Christmas” is engraved by hand so deep that it never fades. Underneath sit two steel runners, bent by hand into the classic sleigh curl at the front and back, in Christmas red or warm gold. At 15.75 inches long, 6.69 inches wide and 3.15 inches high, the sleigh holds a dozen cookies, a cheese plate or a few cupcakes, and it fits on any coffee table, kitchen counter or sideboard.

The result is more than a tray. While the cookies last, it is the most-visited spot in the house. When the plate is empty, it stays out with a candle and a few pine cones – a little sleigh that tells everyone who walks in that Christmas has arrived.

“Some families have brought out the same sleigh for 35 Christmases”

Ansel points to the back wall of the workshop. It is covered in Christmas cards, pinned up year after year, some of them yellowed at the edges. “Those come back every December,” he says. He takes one down from 2008: “Dear Ansel and Opal, the sleigh we bought at the church bazaar in 1989 came out again this year. My children are grown, so now my grandchildren put Santa’s cookies on it. The writing looks exactly like the day we bought it.”

There is a simple reason for that: care instead of speed. Factories are built to turn out thousands a day. Ansel makes one sleigh at a time. Each one takes about eight hours – carving and sanding the board, Opal’s pencil, the engraving, bending and painting the runners, a final rub of oil and one last look in the window light.

The end of an era – and one last chance

Just before Christmas, Ansel will lock the workshop for good. In January the moving truck comes. “There’s nobody to take it over,” he says. “Young people don’t want to stand at a bench for eight hours over one board. I understand that.” It took him the whole summer and fall to finish one last batch, twenty minutes at a time. 196 sleighs are now stacked on his shelves. His life’s work. The last batch that will ever leave his hands.

To make sure they find good homes before he leaves, Ansel has made an unusual decision: a clear special price on every sleigh. “It’s not about the money anymore. At this price I barely cover the bamboo and the steel, and the eight hours are on me. I want them on kitchen tables on Christmas Eve, loaded with cookies, with kids fighting over who gets to carry them. Not in a moving box on the way to North Carolina.” His granddaughter Brynn (25) is helping him sell them online. “Opal and I can write Merry Christmas nine thousand times,” Ansel laughs, “but don’t ask either of us how the internet works.”

It was Brynn who gave the sleighs their name. “When she was four, she called it the cookie sleigh,” Opal says. “Every Christmas Eve she was the one who carried it to the table, very slowly, with her tongue between her teeth.” The name stuck. And for many families, a simple tray has become a Christmas Eve ritual of their own: the children load the sleigh with cookies for Santa, and in the morning it is empty.

What sets Ansel’s sleighs apart:

What real customers say about Ansel’s sleighs

“The nicest present I have ever given my mom”

Customer Jennifer A. (47) from Nashua, New Hampshire, agrees: “I gave my mom one of Ansel’s sleighs at Thanksgiving, so she’d have it for the whole season. She ran her finger along the letters for a long time and said: ‘That’s how my mother used to write.’ It hasn’t left her kitchen table since. You can’t put a price on that.”

Where can you get one of Ansel’s sleighs?

Ansel’s sleighs are only available through Cedar & Tin – an online shop that works with a small group of independent makers. Brynn runs her grandparents’ little corner of the shop there. Only there will you find the original sleighs from Ansel’s workshop. Lookalike trays from mass production have started to appear on Amazon and other big sites. At first glance they may look similar, but the lettering is printed, not engraved, and they have nothing to do with Ansel’s work.

Only this Christmas – then it’s over

Ansel plans to lock the workshop for good just before Christmas. “By then I’d like every sleigh to be on somebody’s table,” he says quietly. Then he smiles. “Forty Christmases. Opal says that’s enough. She’s usually right.”

If you would like one of the original sleighs from Ansel’s last batch, don’t wait too long. With the special price and this much interest, the remaining sleighs are not expected to last. Whatever is still on the shelves when the workshop closes, Brynn will keep sending out – but only until the last sleigh is gone.

It is the last chance to bring a piece of real handwork to your Christmas table – before Ansel’s sleighs are gone for good.

The verdict

Ansel’s Christmas Sleigh is the kind of piece families bring out every December for decades. It is carved and engraved by hand in a small workshop in the White Mountains and turns any coffee table, kitchen counter or sideboard into the place where Christmas happens – with Opal’s “Merry Christmas” right in the middle.

A feel-good piece with real heart – lovingly made, built to be used, and every Christmas Eve a small moment of magic when the cookies go on the sleigh. Thank you, Ansel and Opal!

Readers love Ansel’s sleighs

Photos sent in by readers.