December 24, 1995

SOMEONE left $20 in Adam Osuch's mailbox a couple of weeks ago without leaving a note. A couple days before that, someone else dropped off a set of Christmas lights and, another time, it was sewer pipes that could be fashioned just perfectly into candy canes. It's no surprise that people are always bringing gifts to Mr. Osuch. He has created a little bit of the North Pole just west of the intersection of Long Ridge, High Ridge and Cold Spring Roads and Bedford and Summer Streets in Stamford. On an average weekday, as many as 25,000 cars pass the little Cape Cod house, perched high above the thoroughfare, where the 76-year-old retired assembler lives with his wife, Ann. Today, as on many Christmas Eves past, Mr. Osuch will climb into the Santa Claus suit he keeps in the basement, put yuletide music on a tape recorder and station himself in his magical yard among garland trees, nutcracker soldiers, snowmen and reindeer to wave at passers-by for four or five hours, weather permitting. It's a tradition he thinks the community has come to expect and he doesn't want to disappoint.

THE World War II-era Charter Oak Terrace housing complex in Hartford was intended as transitional housing, as a place where people could live inexpensively until they could save enough to move and possibly buy their own homes. But for many families, living in the state's largest housing project became a way of life. Soon, it was not uncommon to find tenants who had never lived anywhere other than in the sprawl of barracks-style buildings. Vermin and violence became the price to pay for affordable housing.

The Rev. Arthur Caliandro, pastor of New York's distinguished Marble Collegiate Church, has a recurring way of responding to what he calls "my favorite season of the year": He gets sick. Returning to work early last week after four days laid up, Dr. Caliandro reflected on the special strains, psychological and spiritual as well as physical, that Christmas puts on Christian clergy.

AT THE CONCERT HALLS and in the museums, children are everywhere. In the lobby of Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center, some crowd around a table where an oboist from the New York Philharmonic shows how reeds are made. Others press forward to put flutes to their lips or violins to their chins, or to ask musicians to sign pictures of the orchestra.

GROWING up in Scarsdale, the son of two doctors, Christopher Radko never thought he would become a designer of Christmas ornaments. That was before the holiday season when he was 23 and a tree stand he had just bought broke, sending the family's 14-foot balsam and five generations of European trimmings crashing to the floor. The Radkos decorated the evergreen with dried flowers that year. Then the following spring Mr. Radko visited Poland, hoping to replace the shattered heirlooms.