As my husband and I started our family many years ago, we melded the traditions that we had each gown up with and established our own set of holiday rituals. Today our children are grown with lives of their own and our son and daughter-in-law are now going through the same process as they develop their family…

In 1771 a young chemist by the name of E. I du Pont left France and settled on the banks of the Brandywine River in Delaware where he started a gunpowder manufacturing operation. He and his descendants built both a lasting business empire and a lasting legacy of estates and gardens in the Brandywine Valley area of southeastern Pennsylvania and northern Delaware.