The living room was originally the music room in the home of Edward Duhamel, its builder and first owner. The fireplace mantel is decorated with gilded reindeer, dried pomegranates and ribbons. The Christmas tree is decorated with pinecones, natural acorns, dried oranges, pomegranates and hydrangea from the owners' backyard.

"It speaks to us," Linda says. "I've always had a notion that homes should be big, have porches and yards, and children should be able to come and go at will. There should always be food and drink on hand. We like to travel, but home is everything, and entertaining is important. So it was important to find a house with a history — with gracious space."

Their three-story mansion seems a bit like the proverbial "duck out of water," guarding a freeway entrance ramp. But when it was built in 1903, it was approached from broad lawns and faced the house of Henry Fuhrman, a successful merchant and landowner, built in 1890 and demolished in 1960 for I-5. Despite these unfortunate changes, the house still greets guests with four imposing Corinthian columns rising to the third-floor belvedere. Two wrap-around verandas with Ionic columns offer outdoor promenades overlooking Lake Union and the Olympic Mountains.

Fluted columns frame the front door of Robert and Linda Foley's home. Their silent butler - a stone dog - holds a basket of Christmas offerings. Below, ornaments old and new adorn the Foley tree.

Edward Duhamel was both builder and first owner. His contracting company built many important buildings designed by leading architects, such as Charles Bebb, A. Warren Gould, Saunders & Lawton, Kirtland Cutter and Max Umbrecht. Among them were the Rainier Club and the Federal Building (site of the present main post office).

Rumor had it Duhamel chose the style of his house to entice his Virginia-born wife to come to Seattle. Rather than designing it himself, he used plans from a pattern book for a home that had all the accoutrements of a Southern plantation house. But early photographs reveal that the house lacked its plantation-like first- and second-floor porches and balustrades. The second owners, Mr. and Mrs. William H. Parsons, added these in 1910.

Linda Foley has always been fascinated with homes and history. "The last house we had was also built in 1903. The first thing we did was name it 'Fairview.' " They named this house after an Irish country house, "Bellamont," which she interprets as "beautiful view from the hill." They bought the home in February 1998 but didn't move in until September because they had to sell their East Coast house and had two teenagers midway into their school years. Linda was also in the midst of planning a national public-health conference. She had eight months in which to think about how she would furnish the house. But, she says, "The first thing I thought about was the first Christmas in the house."

Christmas has always been very important to Linda and her family. It's not simply the celebration itself, it's the creative energy of the preparation and the team effort that goes into the decorating process.

Her inspiration early on came from many sources, such as decoration of Christmas trees in English, German and Scandinavian traditions. On frequent trips to Vermont, she was also inspired by the Christmas decorations at Robert Todd Lincoln's estate, Hildene. She has fond memories of the beautiful trees on the estate and of sleigh rides in the snowy landscape.

	The dining room table is set with Wedgwood china for a formal Christmas dinner. The Foleys love to entertain, and at Christmas, the table and the mantel are festooned with greens and ornaments.

Nothing is left to chance in Linda's Christmas plans. Each year's decorations have a theme. "One year we did a bird tree and used real candles. Friends then brought us birds. When our first child was born, the bird tree gave way to teddy bears. Everyone who visited went home with a teddy bear."

Next came Victorian decorations. The tree was hung with papier mâché balls, stained glass and old globe ornaments in muted colors of red and green. The following year, she introduced ribbon to her tree. She hung huge wreaths in the picture windows and on the front door and adorned the columns of their Chevy Chase home with pine rope.

Each year she also chose a different color theme. She remembers blue plaid and gold, then green plaid, then green velvet and gold. The first year in their Seattle home, she had Italianate wreaths with cornucopias in blue and plum with grapes and dried pomegranates. "It was elegant, almost sybaritic." She had a neighborhood open house, "a great way to meet the neighbors." She made the acquaintance of a florist who festooned mantels and created festive rings around the ornate candelabra on her dining room table.

For her second year in Seattle, she chose green velvet trimmed with gold beads and gold ribbon and emphasized tree ornaments from nature. "Although I miss the East Coast, I adore the green here. I wanted to pay tribute to that in our Christmas by giving the evergreen more presence than the ornament. We looked for trees that were endemic — Northwestern-grown spruce and fir. I used pine cones, natural acorns, dried oranges, pomegranates and hydrangea from the backyard.

Garland-decked stair balusters welcome visitors to the gracious front hall.

"I never want my tree to look packaged," says Linda. "They can never have a total look because there always has to be room for the family traditions." She points to a framed picture of children Matthew and Nathan, hanging from a branch, "because it is their tree." Among the other treasured oddities: gold-sprayed leaves the family made, angels she brought back to her children from a trip to Rome and peacock feathers they discovered in the blue dining room when they moved in.

In the third-floor family room, her sons have decorated a smaller tree in traditional reds and greens. It is usually packed with little baskets on branches filled with candy canes and sweets, and visiting youngsters go home with these.

It's a huge amount of work, Linda admits. "I get a little tense before the holiday because we probably have enough ornaments for eight to 10 trees, and every time we do a new thing I have to fish through the boxes to decide what will be used. I don't want to start from scratch. I try to integrate what we have with some new things."

She is driven by the childhood magic that has never left her. She describes a popular children's story called "The Polar Express." In it, a boy travels to the North Pole and Santa gives him a bell from his sleigh. The bell slips through a hole in his pocket and the boy is distraught by the loss. He is elated when he opens his Christmas gifts and discovers that Santa has found it and returned it to him. The boy continues to believe in Santa and can still hear the bell of Christmas long after his family members and friends can no longer hear it.

"My oldest son held on to the belief in Santa until he was 12 or 13. He wanted me to say there was no Santa. I said, 'I can't say that, Matthew, because, for me, I still believe. For me, there's still a bell.' "

Lawrence Kreisman is program director for Historic Seattle. He serves on the Seattle Landmarks Preservation Board and is author of "Made To Last: Historic Preservation in Seattle and King County."