Amid the tinsel, toys and trimmings of the holidays, it is easy to get lost in the commercialized trappings of the season. Not when Foxcroft School Director of Activities and Transportation Jane Lockhart is around, though. She simply will not let the students she works with – nor anyone else in the community -- forget that the season is truly about giving.

Each December, Lockhart oversees myriad activities that teach Foxcroft girls to be generous with their time and talents. They benefit the needy in and around Middleburg, bring the school and town together, and spread joy among children of all ages. Lockhart– who has moved a grand total of four miles in her life (from Middleburg village to Foxcroft campus) – gives back because Middleburg, and especially Foxcroft, gave so much to her as a child.

Generous Legacy

The first Wednesday in December 1950: Little Jane Nuckolls attends her first Foxcroft Christmas Pageant. The daughter of a Welsh mother and English father, Jane is a six-year-old student at Middleburg Elementary.

"Miss Charlotte [Haxall Noland, founder of Foxcroft] would send a bus to pick up the students from Middleburg and Banneker Elementary schools," recalls Lockhart. "We went to the gym and sat on mats. Elementary schools then were for grades one through seven so there were lots of kids there.

"After the Pageant we would all go to another building that is gone now, Cook House. We would get in line at a window that had the letter of our last names posted above it. And when I got up to the window I would get two presents: something to play with and something to wear. This would happen every year and clothes always fit."

"When Foxcroft started [in 1914] there wasn't much to Middleburg," Lockhart continues. "There was no doctor, no bank. Miss Charlotte was a part of getting all those things. She was a founder of the bank and she helped establish the Middleburg health center. She and Foxcroft really made Middleburg.

"When I started at Middleburg Elementary, 14 Foxcroft girls would come every Monday and they would teach us how to sing. And another 14 girls would come every Wednesday and would teach us how to draw and paint. And then on Friday another 14 girls would come and they would play outdoors with us and teach us kickball and things.

"On Tuesday and Thursday, Miss Charlotte paid two ladies to come to the school and teach us how to cook and sew. So the boys wouldn't be left out Miss Charlotte paid a man to come and teach them how to use tools and make things."

For Lockhart and the other children, the highlight of the year was always the Christmas Pageant. This past December 3, Lockhart attended her 50th pageant. Her sons, Michael and Christopher, were there, too, with their children. Michael is no the athletic director and head baseball coach at Notre Dame Academy. Jane's husband of 40+ years, Lee Lockhart, is the assistant baseball coach. Watching the Pageant, presented by Foxcroft's New Students each year as a gift to the community, is a Lockhart family tradition. It's a spectacle that includes live donkeys, birds and rabbits as well as splendid costumes and lovely music – and has undergone only cosmetic changes since it first was presented soon after the School was founded in 1914.

Santa's Workshop

The first Friday in December 2006: Santa's Workshop isn't any busier than the Foxhound Auditorium at Foxcroft. Under Lockhart's leadership, the student body and faculty are busy creating care packages for the needy (10 boxes each containing a turkey and enough food to feed a family of four for a month) and supplies for orphan animals at Middleburg Humane Foundation; and decorating 125 miniature Christmas trees, which the girls will deliver to the residents of the Loudoun Long Term Care/Rehab facility in Leesburg and to the Goodwin House in Alexandria.

In addition, the girls are purchasing and wrapping presents for the campus support staff and Residential Life faculty; making personal, homemade cards to accompany all of the above and preparing goody bags for each child who will attend the Pageant on Sunday.

Students and faculty, working in small groups, are also making wreaths and decorating the gym (the Pageant's performance hall); adorning Christmas trees in the dining hall, library and dormitories; stuffing and mailing Christmas cards and fixing a simple supper of sandwiches, vegetable trays and Christmas cookies for the campus community.

The dining room has been closed this night and the money saved, along with donations from the Student Council, Dean of Students and various other donors has been used to purchase the supplies necessary to fund the projects.

In the ensuing week, a bus load of students and Jane will personally deliver 75 trees and sing Christmas carols to the patients at Loudoun County Long Term Care, better known to the Foxcroft community as "Special Friends." Other groups deliver the 10 boxes of food will go to families in Middleburg, St. Louis and The Plains ("Some of these families do not even have a stove," Lockhart tells the girls. "They cook on a hot plate.") and will visit Middleburg Humane.

According to Lockhart, Foxcroft's intimate involvement with the Middleburg schools ended in 1958 when Loudoun County told Foxcroft it had to stop because it was giving the Middleburg students preferential treatment over the rest of the County's schools.

"But the Foxcroft community has continued its community service," says Lockhart, proudly. "and we have found other ways to give back. All year long we visit and support Middleburg Humane, Special Friends and Foxcroft Tutoring. We have the Junior Class Walk-A-Thon, which raises thousands of dollars for different charities and Foxcroft Reaching Out. We clean Foxcroft Road for Adopt A Highway, send educational supplies for Malawi, have clothing drives for disasters and Fairy Tale Closet, Pennies for Patients. . and I don't think I've remembered everything.

"You tell Foxcroft girls there is a cause and they jump on it." And more often than not, the first one in will be Jane Nuckolls Lockhart.