It takes two elements to form a tradition: resonance and consistent repetition. Striking a chord, and then returning regularly to play those familiar, desirable notes with everyone involved.
The result equates to a song with history. One that establishes itself on the calendar, over a period of time. As it materializes and develops into something recognizable, we anticipate its arrival. We plan for it. We take part in it. We embrace it as a part of our lives. The clock then resets, and we begin the countdown for its return.
And for Star Wars fans and collectors, an annual December gathering at a fellow collector’s home has become a meaningful holiday tradition that grows and evolves with each passing year.
For some, it’s a chance to connect with friends and collectors one final time before the new year begins. For others, it’s their holiday celebration -- with the family they chose, and with those who are still here with us. And for all of us, it’s a way to merge our love of Star Wars with the holidays in a unique way.
In this wonderful community, it’s another example of when a meetup becomes more than a meetup. And we wouldn’t expect anything less from the epic weekend known as Sithmas.
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Sithmas is the Pennsylvania Star Wars Collecting Society’s holiday event, hosted and attended by members of a collecting club that will celebrate its 25th anniversary in 2025.
The winter get-together originated in the western region of the state in January of 2016. Scott and Nikki Fetzick hosted the first Sithmas, naming it as a Star Wars-themed play on the word Christmas.
After seeing how positively the western members reacted toward the gathering, Pennsylvanian collector Mike De Stefano decided to host his own Sithmas event on the eastern side of Pennsylvania in December of 2017, which would run concurrently with the western event. A video chat would link both parties, allowing members from both sides of the Pennsylvania group to celebrate together.
Preparing for the first eastern Sithmas, Mike planned to welcome fifteen to twenty guests. However, a snowstorm hit the Lancaster area, and as a result, only four people braved the conditions to trek to Mike’s home that year.
Mike recalled shoveling the driveway in the hours before his company arrived, to create parking spaces for his guests. And while he considered canceling it due to the storm, the worst of the weather swept beyond his town and headed east, allowing those in the central region to make the trip.
But the size of the meetup proved to be beneficial, as it provided a more intimate affair, and helped Mike to work out the kinks of the inaugural function and to lay the foundation for future Sithmas celebrations.
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The holiday season of 2018 brought better weather, and with it, a larger crowd. Approximately twenty collectors attended. Mike introduced the White Bantha, a gift exchange game based on the White Elephant activity played at family parties and at work functions. And the White Bantha was so popular that it became a staple of every successive Sithmas meetup.
After hosting the first two eastern Sithmases, Mike began to see the same aspects that made the western winter meetups so enticing and connective occur within the rooms of his own home. The eastern Sithmas was still small enough to be manageable, but showed the promise of what a holiday-themed collectors event could be someday.
And through attending other clubs’ events, Mike was able to see the potential of that promise. That same year, Mike was invited to take part in his first International Collectors Event, held in New York. Known as ICE, these private gatherings brought together more than one hundred collectors, and were usually held over a long weekend in a specific region of the country. And collectors from other states and other countries participated.
The magnitude of that first ICE trip proved that larger local meetups were possible, and he began to understand the logistics of both planning and producing one on a grander scale.
The 2019 event solidified the annual tradition, bringing back a group of twenty collectors and establishing a consistency. In addition to the White Bantha gift exchange, attendees also competed in a contest assembling Star Wars puzzles.
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Although the pandemic cancelled plans for a 2020 Sithmas event, the online gatherings held during the quarantine, like the Georgia Alliance of Star Wars Collectors’ Virtual Summer Social, demonstrated the value in potentially including collectors who lived beyond Pennsylvania’s borders.
During the summer social, the Georgia Club offered a series of Star Wars-themed panels featuring collectors from various regions of the U.S. and Canada. And members from multiple clubs participated to make that weekend connective and memorable, and a worthwhile substitute at a time when in-person meetups were not possible.
In the summer of 2021, as the pandemic subsided, collectors planned in-person meetups again. Pennsylvania was chosen as the destination for the 2021 ICE event, and Mike hosted a day at his home. More than 60 collectors attended, giving Mike a clearer vision of producing a potential multi-club Sithmas party later that year. He contacted Erik Janniche from the Washington DC Area Star Wars Collectors Club and Tom Quinn from the Empire State Star Wars Collectors Club to extend invitations to members from the two regional groups.
Mike was both touched and inspired by the response from the DC and Empire clubs that year. The number of attendees doubled for the 2021 affair, as fifty members traveled to central Pennsylvania that December.
Sithmas was no longer strictly a Pennsylvania collectors’ meetup. It became a multi-club holiday event. And it was due to Mike challenging of the notion of what a local meetup could be, as well as to the excitement our fellow collectors shared in celebrating the holidays together.
And there was power in the name Sithmas. Like Ron Salvatore’s Hudson Valley meetup RonCon, or Empire State Club member Fonz Napolitano's Syracuse gathering FonzCon, Sithmas became more than a day at a friend’s house. It had earned a title. It was an official event. And we were honored to be a part of it.
When discussing the purpose of Sithmas, Mike described hosting as a way to pay forward the kindness and hospitality that other collectors have shown to him and to those within our community. And he wanted a day at his home to serve as a way to link people together who might not be able to attend the massive international conventions, like Star Wars Celebration.
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In 2022, members from the Ontario Star Wars Collectors Alliance traveled from Canada to attend their their first Pennsylvania Sithmas event. And they’ve not only returned to Sithmas in the following years, but have brought more members with them for each trip.
2022 also marked the year that Northeast Star Wars Collectors Club member Vincent Tricomi created the first official swag memorabilia for Sithmas. To honor the holidays, Vinny produced a patch featuring a gingerbread version of Chewbacca wearing a Santa hat, and with the slogan “It’s beginning to look a lot like Sithmas.” The patch also featured the names of three of the clubs represented at the gathering.
In the following years, Vinny continued the cookie theme, designing a Vader patch in 2023 and adding the Ontario Star Wars Collectors Alliance and the Northeast Club. And a C-3PO cookie marked the 2024 event, along with the additions of the Ohio Star Wars Collectors Club and the Indiana Star Wars Collecting Community.
For Vinny, creating a souvenir of the weekend for attendees and friends has been rewarding in a surprising number of ways. The reception toward each reveal has been nothing but positive. And this year, Vinny was especially touched by the words of encouragement and enthusiasm shared by his friends, who were excited to add another cookie patch to their respective collections.
In the past, I’ve described the Star Wars collectibles as tangible souvenirs of intangible moments and experiences. And the cookie patches encapsulate the joy and laughter shared together at Sithmas, along with the bonds of friendship that form throughout the weekend.
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In 2023, the guest list jumped to sixty-five members, across six Star Wars collectors clubs. Members from the Empire State, the Northeast region, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and Canada joined in the festivities. And in 2024, eighty Star Wars fans and collectors attended the largest Sithmas yet.
And Sithmas has morphed beyond Saturday’s main event, and now includes activities for those who arrive the day before and stay the following morning.
The weekend kicks off with a Friday night dinner at a local restaurant or brewery. This year, thirty collectors assembled at TJ Rockwell’s, a bar and grill in Elizabethtown that specializes in pub fare.
After dinner, Mike invited the group back to his house to continue the party into Saturday morning.
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Saturday’s meetup began in the early afternoon. The first activity was the White Bantha gift exchange, which was run by Erik Janniche and Pennsylvania member Steve Rensi.
The game lasted for an hour or longer, and served as an opportunity to catch up with old friends, meet new ones and to obtain a new Star Wars item to bring home.
At the conclusion of the White Bantha, everyone headed outside to Mike’s backyard for the annual group photo.
As the sun began to set, Mike served a catered dinner, consisting of pizza, pasta, meatballs chicken cutlets and salad from a local Italian restaurant. Guests sat in different rooms of the house, eating and conversing with friends.
At that point, the structured segment of the event concluded, and the rest of the evening was entirely open to collectors to carve their own paths into the party.
Some played in pool tournaments, and in table hockey competitions.
Others toured Mike’s vintage collection room, featuring a wall of carded Kenner figures, a series of displays showcasing the vintage action figures, vehicles and playsets.
But the true centerpiece of the collection is the arrangement of nine Death Star Space Station playsets to form a spherical Death Star.
Throughout the day, collectors frequented Mike’s garage, which had been converted into a room sales space to buy, sell and trade Star Wars collectibles.
The offerings have spanned the entirety of the franchise, from the Kenner action figures to the modern Hasbro toys. And each Sithmas has delivered its share of rare items, like a 41-back Kenner store display bell, modern hardcopies and first shot prototypes, and proof cards and posters.
And while photos may capture a fraction of the moments spent at Sithmas, most of the day was spent floating through the different areas of the house, joining impromptu group conversations, or having one-on-one chats with friends who are like family to us, and with ones we met for the first time that day.
This year’s gathering lasted into the early hours of Sunday morning, with the remaining guests leaving and heading to their cars shortly before 3:00 a.m.
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After sleeping for a few hours, attendees who stayed in the central Pennsylvania area reunited for one final time that weekend, for breakfast at Gus’s Diner.
There’s something special about seeing friends the next day after an event. Spending a few hours together feels like a bonus and a blessing, and those early morning conversations at Gus’s are always some of my personal favorites from the trips.
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So, what is the next phase of evolution for this epic holiday gathering? What will next year’s Sithmas bring?
That’s something that Mike considers constantly. The meetup has turned into a destination event, and with the Friday and Sunday activities, has become a trip worthy of a full weekend. And that might entice club members from farther regions of the country, like the Seattle and Georgia clubs, to put Pennsylvania on their Christmas calendars for 2025.
But no matter what changes Sithmas undergoes to accommodate the rising interest and energetic reception, the heart of the Star Wars-themed festivity remains as pure as Mike’s original intentions for it.
Reflecting on why Sithmas resonates with him, Mike said:
“What I think I love best about it is…it’s a full weekend to immerse yourself in the friendships and in the community that we’ve built, and it creates an opportunity for all of us to reconnect, right before things get crazy, right before the new year turns, and reconnect on those friendships and bonds, and strengthen them year after year.”
If you'd like to learn more about Sithmas, you can listen to a recap of the 2022 event in episode 116, titled "A Sithmas Story," and episode 155 features a conversation with Mike De Stefano, titled "Hosting Sithmas." Only on the Star Wars: Prototypes and Production podcast! Title: Journeyman's Journal: The Usefulness of Kerfing Planes
If you’re a hand tool woodworker without access to a bandsaw, a kerfing plane could be a highly valuable addition to your toolbox. This tool is particularly useful for resawing timber, allowing you to achieve straight and precise cuts with ease.
You may recall the kerfing plane I crafted some time ago. While I was initially enthusiastic about using it, I hadn’t found much reason to resaw timber lately. Consequently, my prized tool ended up at the bottom of my toolbox for many months.
However, that changed today. I needed to resaw some timber for a mockup and finally had a chance to put the kerfing plane to good use. One challenge I encountered was fine-tuning the fence to align the blade perfectly with my knifed line. This required small adjustments, and I quickly realised I needed shims to incrementally nudge the fence.
A trip to Bunnings revealed a solution. Although they didn’t have washers larger than an M16, a helpful young employee suggested checking the plumbing section. There, I discovered rubber shims that fit perfectly over the rods of my kerfing plane. They worked brilliantly, allowing me to make precise adjustments. These shims have proven so effective that I’m considering picking up more for future projects. For now, though, I’m thrilled with the results happy as Larry, as they say!
What makes my kerfing plane truly unique is the innovative design of its teeth. Every cut made with this plane is demanding, as the teeth are highly aggressive by design. Unlike standard saw teeth such as those found on a typical handsaw, which clog consistently when run lengthwise along the edge of a board my kerfing plane’s teeth excel at clearing shavings and avoiding clogs. However, to successfully use this tool, it’s crucial to start gently by “kissing” the surface. This light initial touch allows you to establish control and avoid biting too deeply into the wood. Once the cut is started, the plane glides along smoothly, delivering exceptional performance unmatched by conventional tools.
These teeth will clog when used along the length of the board.
A kerfing plane truly shines in situations like this. No regrets for making it.
