|
Editorial: A trip to Christmas yesteryear
Op-Ed · December 01, 2016
Unlike fictional movies and books ask us to suspend our disbelief, this year’s A Christmas Past asks us to remember to believe again.
The photograph on the front of the 12-page pamphlet on the Dec. 2-3 event starts that effort, showing us an actual Christmas scene from 95 years ago in downtown West Branch: A two-story tall, heavily adorned Christmas tree with long ropes of garland reaching across the intersection of Downey and Main streets. Several nearby hitching posts, wrapped in garland, look like smaller evergreens to complement the centerpiece.
The next several pages show and tell us how West Branch Community Development Group, the Hoover Complex, downtown businesses and numerous other partners and volunteers plan to make a trip back to yesteryear come alive despite our smartphone-heavy culture.
Visit the Gibson Train display at the West Branch Fire Department and get an up-close look at the miniature trains, trees, buildings, streetlights and people and let your imagination draw you in to a much simpler time.
Do the same with the Little Village Display at Touched by Power, hosted by the Hoover Presidential Foundation; the Nativity displays at West Branch Heritage Museum, made possible by Rev. Richard and Ellyn Paulus; the Vintage Snowmobile Display in the parking lot of the Groom Station, sponsored by the Cedar County Winter Warriors; the Timeless Toys Christmas Tree exhibit at the Hoover Library-Museum; and more.
Once again, so many different foods offered — mostly fresh and freshly made, like hot dogs, marshmallows and doughnuts — will bring the aroma of Christmas cooking wafting through downtown. Much of the food is free, and more is available for a donation to a good cause.
The extremely popular horse-drawn rides got a cozy twist this year with the addition of two vis-à-vis (face to face) carriages, putting eight people on a ride through the historic downtown and Hoover Complex.
Music will fill the weekend and the event, with two sets of wandering carolers in the downtown and musical acts at the Hoover Library-Museum, Friends Church and Brich Arch Winery, plus many merchants with Christmas music piped over radios and speaker systems.
The Hoover National Historic Site will be adorned with candles for a night-before-Christmas feel to the park, the Young Footliters will perform A Christmas Carol Fairy Tale, the Visitor Center will feature How the Grinch Stole Christmas! and West Branch Mayor Roger Laughlin will entertain with readings of “’Twas the Night Before Christmas.”
The offerings of sights, sounds, smells and storytelling invite us to the downtown and Hoover Complex to experience Christmas in ways that spark our nostalgic memories and compel us to good cheer.
Don’t miss it!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
