Just Another Lazy Sunday

Or maybe not. Although there are practically no people on the street in Olde Towne today I've managed to keep busy. My window is decorated for Thanksgiving, but I'm thinking Christmas: Everything Christmas (the theme of the Olde Towne Christmas festivities this year). Following on the heels of the success we had with our Halloween Scarecrows, displayed by merchants & individuals all over town, we are planning a similar display of Christmas decorations that I've been told to stop referring to as "Christmas on a Stick". Instead we'll be calling the decorating campaign "Christmas Canes". Yes, much nicer. Christmas Canes are an inexpensive, easy way to decorate the streets of St. Helens and this will be the first year of what is hoped will be an annual holiday decorating event.

All of our budgets are shrinking, whether public or private, so this is a way to keep costs low and still display our Christmas spirit. If participants are half as creative as they were with the Halloweentowne Scarecrows we will see an amazing variety of Christmas Canes popping up all over town. Can't wait to see what people come up with.

3 people so far have tried the idea out, making prototypes of the Christmas Canes to see how long it took and how expensive it was. The conclusion was A) not long - maybe an hour, and B) Very inexpensive - you can just recycle old decorations for the most part. Stop in at Word for Word to see the Christmas Cane that Byron Ohler made. OK, so his may have taken a little longer to make, but that's because he has a reputation to uphold. Byron is responsible for creating the giant lit-up pumpkin we had in the Courthouse Plaza during this year's Halloweentowne festivities, which was a reproduction of the one that sat in the same, exact place during the filming of the movie Halloweentown. Clever examples of Christmas Canes were also made by Doug Boyes, owner of Wild Currant Catering and Tiffany Smith, owner of the Dockside Stead & Pasta. We took pictures and will have them available as examples, but I am not sure when that will happen. Stay tuned.

So as I am not very crafty, more comfortable with words than paint & glue, my job was to put together & distribute press releases and instructions for merchants or individuals wanting to participate in displaying Christmas Canes or featuring an item in the I Spy Christmas contest. I'm safer doing something with words, as words rarely result in cut fingers or tangled knots (that would be my version of knitting).

I hope that everyone else in town enjoys Christmas as much I do and that our Christmas Cane campaign to decorate will be popular. Maybe it will help us focus on enjoying the beauty and fun of the season at a time when many of us are trying to economize. We can all use a little diversion from worrying about the economy. This year instead of spending a lot of money on a ready-made Christmas let's try something different. What do you say we all join together in decorating the streets of St. Helens with our Christmas Canes? Remember, this year it's all about EVERYTHING CHRISTMAS! And I'll try really hard to produce my own Christmas Cane - hopefully without gluing my fingers together.