Santa’s elves will be helping children in Barrhead write their letters to the North Pole during the Christmas Light-up, which will be held in downtown Barrhead this Friday, Nov. 16.
The Main Street Merchants Association will be hosting the Christmas Light-up in partnership with the Barrhead Chamber of Commerce, which is sponsoring the event.
“What happens is basically we’re going to have the stores close from 5-6 p.m. And then at 6 p.m., the stores’ doors will open and all the lights will come on and then there will be music in the streets,” said Chris Driessen, who chairs the association.
Participating stores will be hosting sales throughout the evening and decorating their storefronts. Those who head downtown will be encouraged to take pictures of their favourite storefront and then submit it to the Main Street Merchants’ Facebook page, with the winning store earning bragging rights.
The main event, however, will be the adventure with Santa’s elves for local children.
Starting at 6 p.m, parents can bring their children down to Footworks Dance Academy where dancers dressed as elves will be helping children write their letters to Santa.
Their letters will be sealed with wax, and Driessen said the dance instructors will then accompany the children down the street to the post office.
After mailing their letter to the North Pole, the children will stop to sing and dance to Christmas songs with the elves, and then finish the evening with a hot chocolate and a cookie. The kids will then head back to Footworks Dance Academy to be picked up by their parents.
Driessen indicated this is the first year they have hosted the letter-writing adventure with Santa’s elves.
“We’re kind of putting together a little storyline that Santa has flown his elves in and the kids get to meet the elves and see what’s happening before Santa gets here,” she said.
“We’re trying to really create this whole storyline and we’re just going to keep building off of it.”
To have their children participate, parents must pre-register either through The Flower Shoppe or Footworks Dance Academy.
The children will be split into three groups and each group will be with the elves for one hour. As such, parents will have to register to bring their children down to the dance studio at either 6, 7 or 8 p.m.
There is no cost to take part, although cash donations will be collected as part of the event to give to Family and Community Support Services (FCSS).
Although they initially considered requesting a Christmas gift from parents, Driessen said they didn’t want to exclude any kids who wanted to join in the fun but didn’t have the money to buy a gift.
“It’s been a hard year; what if people can’t even afford it? Then the kids don’t get to participate,” she said.
“So we said we would just do cash donations; even if someone threw a toonie in, that’s fine. And if they couldn’t, fine.”
Four weeks of Christmas
The Christmas Light-up is the first event of four Fridays’ worth of Christmas-related events in downtown Barrhead.
The light-up will be followed with a Black Friday sale on Nov. 23, with stores remaining open until 9 p.m.
The downtown will then host “Date Night” on Nov. 30. After going out for dinner at a local restaurant, couples will be able to come downtown and take in some live music and wine-tasting.
As well, each store will be handing out cards that can be taken to another store to receive a gift.
The whole event is intended as a nice night for couples to enjoy what’s happening on Main Street, Driessen indicated.
Finally, Santa’s Parade will be hosted on Dec. 7. Besides the parade, there will be photos with Santa, hay rides and other fun events from 7-9 p.m.
Driessen noted that the Christmas light-up and Santa’s parade used to be held separately years ago, but at some point Barrhead started holding them together.
However, at the request of local merchants, they’re experimenting with holding the events during two separate evenings this year.
“People said, ‘Well, let’s divide them out … and let’s put the parade a little later, so kids don’t have to wait so long from the time they see Santa until Christmas morning,’” she said.
“They were wanting to (return to) how we used to do it. This is a trial for us this year; we’re just going to see how it goes.”
