Santa's Village

The 54th annual Santa's Village held in our neighboring town is over, and by most accounts it was a success. The community center, housed in what used to be a Methodist church, opens its lavishly decorated upper floor to the children of the community, no matter their age. The place has been made into a little village of shops surrounding a mammoth train set that runs through its mountainous loop just outside the cottage where Santa greets visitors. Each year elves (costumed upper elementary and middle school students) give to each visitor a new ornament with the year and location emblazoned on it, and photos taken with Polaroid cameras are given to families to mark the occasion. Several generations of visitors keep the tradition alive every December, and families new to the community are just as welcome as ones who have come every year for decades.

The problem with holding an event like this is the limitation that the old building has on the number of people it can safely accommodate in its upper floor. Fire exits are clearly marked, but for safety's sake, the number of people up there at any one time is restricted. Families bring their children to the basement level first to register, get name tags, have a small figure painted on their cheek if they wish, and then they move up one flight of stairs to the main level to wait. In the interim before they can mount the wide wooden staircase, kids, parents, grandparents, and friends meander through a holiday craft fair located in the wooden-floored gym. Those of us who have booths offer a variety of items for sale ranging from homemade toffee to fishing flies, from hand painted ornaments to jars filled with colorful layers of sand, from jewelry to alpaca and mohair scarves, from quilts and afghans to carved wood items and maple syrup. Some years the number of crafters has been so large that getting around the room was easy only for the quick little children who were eluding their parents' grasp, and others, the aisles were much wider and the tables much fewer. This year was, not surprisingly, the latter.

The nice thing about the Santa's Village craft fair is that once a display is set up on Friday afternoon, it can be covered each evening and left up until the event ends on Sunday evening. Officials of the community center make sure they're the last ones out before the building is locked up tight, so they provide the security. Another nice thing is the fact that the attraction upstairs draws plenty of people who have to wait their turn, so our customers are a captive audience. Still another nice thing is the reunion-type atmosphere as people who live here and those who moved away return to experience the event, and we get to visit with them, meet their children, and catch up on their lives. (Of course I'm always amazed at the ages of their kids and the amount of gray hair I'm seeing on these people who still seem in my mind to be teenagers.) The possible drawbacks are the iffy winter weather and the state of the economy, both of which had effects this year. Friday night was more sparsely attended because of the ice and power outages in parts of the area. (I haven't mentioned it yet: we had no school on Friday due to inches of sleet and ice, downed trees and power outages.) Saturday was the day of people looking more than purchasing. Sis3 joined me for part of that day to sell her magnets, but the lookers weren't the buyers. Today was the most lucrative of the three for me and for the crafters on my side of the room. Earrings, necklaces, wrist watches, covered bridge notecards, and calendars sold, and one woman asked about purchasing multiple calendars. It looks like I'll be making another order of them, and that pleases me.

Now that Santa's Village is over, I have two more sales events - to staff at work, and at a table during the Celebration of Christmas event this Thursday evening - and the seasonal gift shop as the end-of-the-year sales, and then I'm done. It's been a better season than the fairs in early October seemed to indicate it would be, and for that I'm thankful. I'm also thankful for 6.5 work days between now and vacation!