If you’ve ever taken a leisurely stroll throughout the picturesque, quaint downtown Overland Park, KS, you likely have a small list of shops you always make sure to visit.

There’s Penzey’s Spices, where I stock up on spices from across the globe. Oh, and there’s The Tasteful Olive, a merchant specializing in olive oils and balsamic vinegars.

Who can forget Ten Thousand Villages, that small merchant selling fair-trade crafts from nearly every continent on the globe? Though not an independent business, Ten Thousand Villages does have locations throughout the Midwest. Run nearly entirely by volunteers, these stores focus on the actual stories behind the crafts they sell – the people and organizations who made them, and the countries from which they hail. Its website states, “As a pioneer of fair trade, we do business differently, putting people and planet first. That means you can trust that every purchase and donation you make directly impacts the life and community of its maker in an under-resourced community. Together we break the cycle of generational poverty and ignite social change.”

When you shop locally, you put a face on the artists who make items like crafts and edible goodies by hand. This merchant does the same, but by putting a face on the people who create them, stores like Ten Thousand Villages makes this large world of ours just a bit smaller.

In this issue, we shine a spotlight on nativity scenes, both ones we might remember from childhood and ones that tell the story of Christ’s birth with an interpretation we may have never seen before. Ten Thousand Villages is just one of many merchants that sells such items this time of year.

Shopping at such a unique vendor can not only expose us to different cultures, viewpoints, and holiday celebrations – it can make us feel good about giving a bit to a larger cause. Unlike smaller, independent merchants, you might not meet the artisan face to face, but you’re aware that your financial support of them means that someone, somewhere, wants them to thrive and wishes for them a better community, a better life. The item you buy just feels like an ancillary benefit.

Far too often, we don’t truly appreciate traditions when we’re living them in the moment. This is especially true for those traditions observed during the holiday months.

When I was little, we would spend every Christmas Eve at the home of my maternal grandparents. Often, my parents, younger brother and I would be the first to arrive (and thus the first to get to the candy dish and munch on some chocolate peanut clusters, which Grandma made every Christmas). My aunts, uncles and cousins would trickle in right before the meal was served. We didn’t carve up a ham for the entrée – no, no, we were yuletide rebels who enjoyed tender, smoked brisket on little cocktail buns instead.

But the highlight of the entire evening – well, at least for the adults – was the completion of the small nativity scene that sat under the equally small Christmas tree in the living room.

Every Christmas Eve, my grandparents would put the baby Jesus figurine in an adjacent room, and it was the job of the youngest grandchild to carry the figurine into the living room and gingerly place it under the Christmas tree while everyone else watched. Eventually, this tradition evolved, and every year, the grandchildren took turns being the bearer of the savior. We grandchildren joked about how embarrassing the entire show felt as we shuffled our way toward the base of the tree, a chorus of “ooohs” and “aaahs” meeting our ears.

As an adult, however, I’ve come to appreciate the presence of such traditions. I know plenty of people who never had the opportunity to enjoy those with their family, and even those who didn’t have much of a family to begin with. Now, I feel fortunate that we youngsters were able to make our elders smile and feel surrounded by God’s presence. It’s still a memory my brother and I share every Christmas.

Last weekend I enjoyed my first visit to Merchant Square in Independence, MO, where I had the pleasure of interviewing Jace Sanders, the antique mall’s owner.

Before approaching the front counter to meet him, I browsed the aisles (each one named after a street, attraction or famous person associated with the area). In a booth within the ‘Harry Truman’ aisle, I came across a small item, which I have found myself researching ever since.

It was a brown leather wallet, stamped with an art deco pattern on its exterior. The inside of one of the wallet’s folds was simply stamped ‘B.F. McLean’ in gold letters. And inside one of the pockets, I found the following note, written in neat, capital letters:

Benjamin Franklin McLean, grandson of Wichita founding father Benjamin Franklin McLean. Ben was killed in the Battle of the Bulge in World War II.

For the past year, I had been telling myself that I needed a new wallet – mine was looking pretty ratty and in poor condition. Maybe this newfound treasure would prove to be a conversation piece.

Maybe this newfound treasure would prove to be a conversation piece. Only my friend Google would make that determination. At just $20, I snatched up the wallet and took it to the front counter, anxious to begin learning its story – or at least the story of the person who owned it.

When I got home, I Googled the name in the wallet and found that Benjamin Franklin McLean was born in 1858 (in Canada, no less), worked as a banker, and served twice as the mayor of Wichita (once in 1901-04 and again for a year, from 1923-24. McLean’s son, Benjamin Drew McLean, himself a Harvard graduate, bank officer and World War I veteran, married Elizabeth Anna Mabry, a fellow Canadian, in 1919; he took the helm of his father’s bank in 1930, when McLean Sr. died. The younger McLean and his wife would eventually have five children, one of whom, Ben (their only son and the owner of the wallet), was born in 1921. Not much else is documented about Ben other than he enlisted in the service toward the end of World War II and died during the Battle of the Bulge in early 1945. He was survived by his wife and a young daughter.

Fifty years ago

Fifty years ago, a former journalist with The Kansas City Star traded the hustle and bustle of a daily newsroom for the relative calm of a smaller publication with a niche audience.

Well, it wasn’t all calm. There were still deadlines to meet – new advertising clients to meet, too.

Today, we can see that Ken Weyand, the founder of Discover North, (now Discover Vintage America) made the right decision all those years ago. But in 1973, when printed local, regional, and national news was still a lucrative business, and one very much in demand, the prospect of abandoning that industry to start a publication dedicated to antiques and events focused on history and the collection of vintage items had to be daunting, as change always is. Publication behemoths like Antique Trader have proven that on a national scale, collectors still flock to niche publications in droves to get their fingers on the proverbial pulse of the antique industry, but would the same hold true for a local publication?

Weyand’s gamble paid off, with his fledgling publication continuing to add to its roster of advertising clients in the months and years since.

Antique stores both old and new claimed their spots within our pages, and with them, a small team of talented, passionate writers who penned monthly columns on their individual areas of expertise. And the advent of digital media and social media has only helped our mission of covering this ever-changing industry, instead of harming our print distribution rate, like daily and weekly newspapers.

In my days as a college professor, I taught my reporting students that those media consumers who continue to read printed stories in newspapers and magazines do so because they assume the information contained therein to be credible, crafted by a professional journalist who possesses the training and skills necessary to dig a little deeper into stories than those writing for fly-by-night blogs or other websites without the credibility of legacy publications behind their byline.

Ken Weyand already had his experience with The Star helping him to craft, guide, and maintain his publication, so advertisers and subscribers could rest easy in the knowledge that Discover Vintage North would be a publication in which they could trust. In the years since Ken retired, and as our publishers, editors, and writers have changed (along with trends in the antiques industry itself), our dedication to quality, accurate coverage has remained. Our passion for the subject matter remains as strong as ever, too.