Whether it was miners fear of bad luck on Christmas Eve, or Santa in a helicopter, the Panther Valley has always had unique holiday traditions.

The Lansford Historical Society Museum knows a lot about the coal region’s history.Bruce Markovich and Bob Perrin shared some of their memories as well as the earlier history of the borough.

For those who grew up in the 60s, one of the most exciting things about Christmas was shopping on Ridge Street. Brights Department Store drew throngs of shoppers to the town’s business district. On a busy weekend, people would be packed shoulder to shoulder on the sidewalks. Christmas carols would be played from loudspeakers. To get inside the store itself, you had to wait in a line.

“Sometime there would be 15-20 East Penn buses parked. People would be coming to Lansford from Pottsville, Hazleton and Lehighton,” Markovich said. “They would have 3 or 4 police officers on at a time just to direct traffic. It was nonstop.”

Brights’ window displays had automated figurines, called Robotrons, which were unique at the time. They depicted Santa and the elves.

Another tradition going back to the 1950s was the arrival of Santa via helicopter at the football stadium in Lansford. He also parachuted for at least one year. Perrin said a parachuting Santa once landed on a coal car and broke his leg.

“The guy that did the parachute, sometimes he was different from the actual Santa, but you weren’t supposed to know that. The guy that played Santa, he didn’t parachute.

Going back to the mining days, Christmas was more of an austere religious holiday. The choir at the Welsh Church, Abbott and Pine streets, would sing each Christmas Eve night, drawing huge crowds.

“People would come for miles and stand all up and down Water Street and Abbott Street just to listen to their choir,” Markovich said.

Every house was heated with coal.

Miners worked hard, but never on Christmas Eve. They felt that the day before a vacation was when they were most likely to suffer an accident or other calamity.

“That was considered bad luck. Many accidents happened, whether it was carelessness before the holiday,” he said. “They thought it was a curse.”

In Andrewsville, to the east of town, they would drink a mix of beer, whiskey and red pepper called palpinkei — which may be a phonetic spelling.

“They would make it in a big tub, and the entire village would turn out to get this stuff called palpinkei,” he said.

Families dressed in their best clothes, and “visiting” was a tradition. As Markovich said, there were three pillars of life in the mining region.

“At one time, it was work, church and family. And it was usually in that order,” he said.