The Nora Store Christmas tradition gets national attention
As originally published in the USA Today.
On the nearly invisible corner of 307th Street and 475th Avenue in the middle of Union County, South Dakota, where farmland hugs you from everywhere and the topography begins to roll, I found Father Christmas.
Yes, he had the bellowing laugh and the twinkling eyes and the type of generosity in which you waited for him to pull a candy cane out of his pocket.
But this was not our Santa Claus. Even more than the jolly old elf, he is the humble and charming Mike Pedersen of Nora, South Dakota: a gentleman who plays a restored pipe organ in the middle of nowhere and invites all to come on in, enjoy a Styrofoam cup of warm apple cider and sing carols with him every Christmas.
“I just want people to leave feeling blessed and refreshed,” Pedersen said. “I never dreamed it could have turned into something like this.”
Come Monday morning, Pedersen will be the featured segment of “Beg-Knows America,” a CBS News series that highlights inspiring stories of everyday heroes and is hosted by CBS news correspondent David Begnaud.
“They say people from maybe even all around the world could hear about Nora,” Pedersen said. “Can you believe it?”
From world-renowned Begnaud himself, it’s a resounding yes.
“This is a perfect story at Christmastime,” Begnaud said. “I think the story of a defunct general store coming alive once a year thanks to one man and a restored organ is the slice-of-life, heart-of-America tale I want to tell.”
You can watch him do so at 8 a.m. Monday on CBS.
How a house painter came to Christmas carols
Nora is an unincorporated town in southeast South Dakota with a population of two: Pedersen and his neighbor, Luke Lyle.
But it’s at least an established community.
There first was the Ronning General Store in the late 1800s, next to a creamery where farmers brought in their milk every Tuesday and Friday and became well known for its Sunshine butter brand, Pedersen said.
After that closed in 1906, the Nora Store opened on the same corner promptly in 1907, notably selling vinegar for farming and flour sacks for handmade clothing.
After the Nora general store closed in 1962, it wouldn’t be until a decade later Pedersen settled in.
By then, many mice and cats had beat him to it, nesting into the corners of the Nora Store and in the dilapidated kitchen in the back. But for the next 13 years, Pedersen tidied it and warmed it, and this would become his home.
“My goal was actually to be a farmer,” said Pedersen, who during the rest of the year paints nearby houses, barns and chicken coops. “I got to pay for all this somehow.”
But after his grandparents died, who raised a family farm in the Beresford area, he felt no need to return. Instead, he spent time in California and then Arizona, before a centennial celebration at his mother’s old church, Roseni Lutheran in Beresford, called him back to the Nora area for good.
How a hobby became so much more
Even still, hosting sing-a-longs every holiday was never his intent.
It was happenstance.
In 1986, he bought a few acres to move out of the Nora Store and into the home next door (Someone had to keep up those population numbers).
Shortly thereafter, he began collecting parts of an old pipe organ stored at the University of South Dakota’s National Music Museum in Vermillion.
“Oh, music has always been just a hobby,” said Pedersen, who once took piano lessons “from an old neighbor lady” while living in Los Angeles and otherwise plays music and sings for Roseni Lutheran “just up the hill.”
But, by the fall of 1989, he and a few buddies started piecing the ol’ organ back together enough that “the Lord’s plan” made itself clear.
This hobby would become a life.
“I was awestruck to sit in front of such a thing,” he told the crowd of the organ this week, during a sing-a-long on a blustery Tuesday morning. “I thought, ‘Oh, what a blessing!’ I didn’t deserve it, but I had to hear what it sounded like, so this is what I heard.”
Then he turned his back from the crowd and into the black-and-white haven of his keys, and he played the first song he would ever play on it:
Jesus loves me, this I knowFor the Bible tells me soLittle ones to him belongThey are weak, but he is strong
There were about 20 guests that morning, singing along already and calling out their favorite classics to play next. They arrived in a caravan at about 10 a.m. for a private sing-a-long, from the Trinity Lutheran Church in Tea.
“You can tell we’re Lutheran because no one is sitting in the front row,” said Dick Gors, president of their 55-and-older church group that gathers monthly and attends the Nora Store Christmas as their December activity each year.
“We’ve been coming here for five years now,” said Linda Dannen, of Tea, as she and her husband, Leo, sat in the back row and shared a hymnal. “Mike is a joy, and he makes it a good day.”
Together, they all tapped their feet while Pedersen commanded his organ like a switchboard and they sang, “Away in a Manger,” “Silent Night” and “Oh Come, All Ye Faithful.” Another couple in the back embraced each other as they all sang, “O Holy Night.”
Pedersen took off his shoes around song three to better feel the music and encouraged everyone to ring the jingle bells he placed in each row.
He said guests will sing solos, offer to play their own instruments and even bring cookies for the crowd. Like any place of worship, visitors found an infectious feeling of hope in the room.
“I can remember my husband, Ric, and I coming down here a time or two, and there were people standing outside on the porch and even in the back of the building, so we just stood outside and listened for a while,” said Julie Morren, a fellow pianist from Beresford who has come to accompany Pedersen for many years. “People just hang from the rafters here.”
'Is this my last hurrah?'
Overwhelmingly enough that 73-year-old Pedersen has considered his finale, after 35 years.
“I was having a bad hip and a bad attitude,” Pedersen said, thinking maybe he’d forego the weekend open houses and just host a few private groups instead, like the folks from Trinity Lutheran and the students from Missouri Valley Christian Academy, who were on the schedule the next day.
But then press started rolling in.
A USD student ran an article in The Volante, South Dakota Magazine featured a story last month on Nora Store Christmas without him even knowing, and Begnaud from CBS News called him out of the blue.
Pedersen at least needed to give us one more year, and now Nora might need more parking.
“My hope is that when you see our stories, you see the best among us,” Begnaud said.
He’s been to South Dakota before, covering the pandemic in 2020 and then featuring a Sioux Falls artist earlier this year.
“I hope you see the ordinary doing the extraordinary,” Begnaud said. “It is ordinary to restore an organ. It is ordinary to want to bring people together. But it is extraordinary to attract people from Nebraska and Minnesota and Iowa and across South Dakota, and to do it for more than 30 years. That is extraordinary.”
Pedersen walked gingerly with a cane, and took a break from the organ while Morren continued to play her piano in the corner. He wondered aloud if it’s soon time to, “play music in heaven?”
“Nora has been my life ministry, but is this my last hurrah?” he said after the show. “Me and fame? I don’t need any of that. I’m just trying to be a servant and bless you this Christmas.”
Magic for your Christmas
There is a magic in little Nora, in that century-old country store on the corner transformed into a nostalgic wonderland. But it’s not the trinkets on the wall, a guestbook the size of an encyclopedia, the baby Christmas tree twinkling in the corner or the faux Poinsettia adorning his organ that charms.
It’s Mike, indeed.
“Oh, there’s no place like Nora for the holidays,” Pedersen improvised as he sang, “for the holidays you can’t beat home sweet home!”
Visitors stood and finished together with “We Wish You a Merry Christmas,” before Pedersen gave hugs and kindly bid everyone farewell and a happy holiday.
To put a bow on the magic of the hour, Pedersen escorted us to the door and hanged his arm out to wave, the way Father Christmas departs in his sleigh, and do you know what?
It started to snow.
