It’s the most wonderful time of the year.
A group of passionate Revelstokians are spreading cheer this holiday season by working with local businesses, city council and the community to organize a number of Christmas-themed events over the month of December.
Roberta Bobicki, one of the locals at the heart of planning the events, says that everything over the next month is built to engage the community, spread holiday spirit and give joy to the children of Revelstoke–all while doing it in a safe manner due to limitations put in place by the COVID-19 pandemic.
An events calendar, being released on Nov. 25, will highlight upcoming events, with clickable links to outline what each event will entail.
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Here are some of the many events to look forward to:
•The month of events kicks off on Nov. 26 with Moonlight Madness, a local sale featuring local merchants that mirrors Black Friday. The Illuminate Revelstoke Society has installed state-of-the-art lights on six trees leading into Grizzly Plaza that will be lit for the first time at 4 p.m. that day. The lights installed will be usable by the city year-round due to their white colour and low power usage.
•Meghan Porath at the Visual Arts Centre is coordinating local artists to paint winter landscapes on downtown Revelstoke businesses to brighten the spirits of holiday shoppers and to give the downtown a cohesive holiday theme.
•Due to restrictions, children won’t be able to interact directly with Santa this year. The planning committee is coordinating ‘virtual time with Santa’ by setting up video-calls between children and Santa at home, at their pre-school and at the child care centre.
• The Revelstoke Fire Department will be taking Santa around Revelstoke on the back of one of their firetrucks, live-streaming the event so that children can look out their windows as Santa passes their house.
•The Christmas light tour map is back again this year. Residents can register their house to go on the map of all the festively-lit houses around town. “You don’t have to be a department building the get on the list,” said Bobicki. “If you’ve got a nice tree in your front yard that you’ve put a couple lights on, that’s awesome.”
•Dec. 10-12 is Christmas sweater weekend.
According to Bobicki, the committee is not putting a lot of structure into these events for the purpose of letting residents do whatever they feel comfortable with, given the current circumstances.
“The whole intent is to put a little bit of fun into this festive season, and do what we can to make the downtown core as lively as possible,” said Bobicki.
To learn more about the events planned for December, contact the community spirit committee at revelstokecommunityspirit@gmail.com.
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josh.piercey@revelstokereview.com
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