For the 26th year, an early December holiday festival will be presented so that all of Newtown and residents from surrounding towns can gather to continue celebrating the holiday season.

The 2011 Holiday Festival event will take place Sunday, December 4, and will welcome returning favorites and present some new offerings. It will also note the hiatus for at least one year of a longstanding event.

The Newtown Savings Bank Presents The 26th Annual Holiday Festival To Benefit Newtown Youth & Family Services — the formal name of the Newtown Holiday Festival — will be focused on Main Street, with family friendly events taking place at C.H. Booth Library and Edmond Town Hall. Festival events include everything from a walking tour of northern Main Street, live music, basketball contests, ballet and staged readings to a Teddy Bear Tea, a raffle of decorated tabletop trees and wreaths, and a gingerbread house contest.

Festival tickets are $15 per person, or $30 for a family four-pack (two adults and two children), with tickets for additional children $5 each. Tickets are available at Everything Newtown, 61 Church Hill Road; C.H. Booth Library, 25 Main Street; and Newtown Savings Bank’s two Newtown branches (39 Main Street and 228 South Main Street, within Sand Hill Plaza) and Bethel branch at 68 Stony Hill Road (Route 6).

Tickets will be available at these locations until noon on Friday. On the day of the festival, tickets will available at Edmond Town Hall (45 Main Street) and C.H. Booth Library (25 Main Street).

 

Events At Booth Library

The two events taking place at the town’s library, at 25 Main Street, are the Festival of Trees and the Gingerbread House Contest.

The Festival of Trees is open to any group/club, individual, organization or business that wants to put a decorated tree and/or wreath into the collection. Previous collections have also included swags and decorative items. Items can be live, artificial, stuffed, ceramics, wood, confections, etc. Entries have been limited only by the imagination of their donor.

Residents should note that the Festival of Trees will actually run Saturday and Sunday, December 3 and 4. The public will take a chance on each item through the purchase of raffle tickets. More than 30 donated trees, decorations, wreaths, etc have been promised for this year’s festival.

“Anyone can visit the Festival of Trees, whether or not you have a Holiday Festival ticket,” Denise Rodriguez, who is organizing this Holiday Festival event, pointed out.

Festival of Trees raffle tickets are $2, three for $5, or eight for $10.

As with the Festival of Trees, families, friends, clubs, and organizations have been working for weeks on their edible creations for this year’s Gingerbread House Contest. NYFS staff and Holiday Festival volunteers are hoping to at least equal, if not increase, last year’s presentation of 15 entries. Gingerbread houses will be set up on the library’s main level.

There are a number of categories for this year’s contest, and ribbons will be awarded in each category: Adult Individual (age 18 and up), Adult Group, Individual Child, with children to enter by grade (K–2, 3–5, 6–8 or 9–12), and Child — Group (same grade brackets), and Family (minimum one adult and one child). NYFS staff and board members will be judging the categories, and winners will be announced at 5 pm.

“You do not need to be present to win,” said NYFS Operations Coordinator Kaitlyn Johnson.

Edmond Town Hall

Meanwhile, the town hall, at 45 Main Street, will be home to The Teddy Bear Tea, a different take on the Victorian Tea of previous years; Mix & Match Free Throw Tournament, a brand-new event; two performances of Nutcracker Suite Ballet by Jennifer Johnston’s Malenkee Ballet Repertoire Company/Newtown Centre of Classical Ballet, a perennial favorite; and the debut of The Stray Kats Theatre Company at the Holiday Festival, who will offer readings of three one-act plays by Frederick Stroppel.

The performances will all be in the town hall’s theater. The ballet performances will be at noon and 2 pm, and the Stray Kats — who have traditionally done their readings in the Alexandria Room — will take the stage on the building’s main floor at 4 pm.

“The plays are holiday themed. They’re lovely pieces — they’re funny, they’re touching,” Stray Kats Artistic Director Kate Katcher said this week. “He’s a great writer,” she continued, of the playwright whose works will be featured on Sunday.

Ms Katcher describes The Land of Sweets, the first work, as being about “a Russian ballet teacher teaching her umpteenth version of Nutcracker to the kids, and she has a flask of vodka in her hands, and it’s very funny.”

Mashed Turnips, the second Stroppel work, “is a delightful piece he just wrote for the four of us.” Ms Katcher will be joined by her husband, the actor Don Striano, along with Florence Phillips (who was just featured in the company’s season opener, Holiday Memories) and Carol Schweib for Sunday’s readings. All four are Equity actors.

“Mashed Turnips,” said Ms Katcher, “is about the mother-in-law who absolutely hates everything at Thanksgiving. She just complains, and complains, and complains.”

The third reading will be On The Bridge, about a man and woman who meet on a bridge on Christmas Eve.

“They’re both totally depressed but the find something in each other, and that keeps them from what they were there for,” said Ms Katcher, who said the company plans to do the presentations “like radio plays” on the stage of the town hall’s theater.

The Teddy Bear Tea, in the Alexandria Room, will again be filled with music and plenty of tea and breads. The new focus will be on children and their favorite teddy bears (or stuffed animals). A Best Dressed Bear Contest is also planned. Children should bring their favorite teddy bear to the Tea by 2 pm, when a winner will be selected.

“We have an exciting teddy bear prize for the winner,” promises Ms Johnson.

Town Historian Dan Cruson will lead Historic Walking Tours of Main Street. Each tour will last approximately 45 minutes, with Mr Cruson’s focus to be on the history and architecture along the route.

Tours will begin at 11 am and 1 and 3 pm, and are included in the cost of a Holiday Festival ticket. Anyone interested in joining Mr Cruson for one of the tours should meet him at the front steps of the town hall.

“Pray that we don’t have rain, and bring lots of questions,” the town historian said this week.

Also new this year is a Decorated Door & House Contest. Residents have been invited to decorate the front door or their entire home, and e-mail a photo to NYFS. The photos will be printed and posted in the lobby of Edmond Town Hall on Sunday during the Holiday Festival.

The public is invited to view the entries, and winners — as selected by NYFS staff and board members — will also be announced at 5. Gift certificates will be awarded to Best Decorated Door and Best Decorated House.

Many of the family-friendly events will be accompanied by live music. The NHS Singers, an auditioned group of Newtown High School students who perform a cappella, directed by Jane Matson, will be singing Edmond Town Hall at 1:30, and then inside the library at 2:20 and 3:10.

Between 11 am and 3 pm, local musicians will perform during the Teddy Bear Tea, among them piano students of Patsy Beddoe-Stephens; Sarah Hasselberger on viola, accompanied by Alex Lampel on piano; and guitarist Caylin Trickey.

Organizers hope to have at least one Girl Scout troop caroling inside the library at 1:30, and more musicians inside the town hall lobby. Schedules were still being arranged on December 1.

House Tours On Hiatus

Anyone who is familiar with previous Holiday Festivals has probably noticed one omission to this year’s event: the house tours.

Popular in the past, the tours through private homes on and in the vicinity of Main Street will not be part of this year’s festival.

“The house tours are on hiatus,” Holiday Festival Chairperson and NYFS Secretary Layne Lescault confirmed. “They will return, eventually, and they will be revamped like the rest of the festival. This year we are focusing on events that families can enjoy together.”

Related Events

Also on Sunday’s schedule are the Advent Service of Lessons & Carols at Trinity Episcopal Church, an open house at Matthew Curtiss House, and a showcase of items by TJ Designs. These events are free and open to the public.

Linda Jones will be at Edmond Town Hall, offering items from the TJ Designs collection, from 11 am until 3 pm. Items will include handcrafted beaded jewelry, autism lapel pins, bracelets, and key chains, all supporting autism awareness. The items are sold in memory of Tyler Jones, Mrs Jones’s son, with proceeds going to autism outreach and research.

Trinity’s service will begin at 2 pm in the sanctuary at 36 Main Street. The annual ceremony consists of Advent scripture readings read by members of the Trinity community, interspersed with carols performed by the Choir of Men & Women and Trinity Choristers. (Please see “Advent Event At Trinity” on page B-7, for full details.)

The Matthew Curtiss House, at 44 Main Street, is the headquarters of Newtown Historical Society. Costumed docents traditionally offer tours of the 18th Century saltbox construction, which will be decorated in historic fashion.

Senior and junior docents will serve cookies and cider, and members will also be showing off and discussing some of the historical society’s latest acquisitions. The open house will also offer a look at some of the games our Colonial ancestors played once their chores were done. (Please see “Open House & Living History Demonstration Sunday At Matthew Curtiss House,” on page A-10, for details.)

To find out more about NYFS or the Holiday Festival, call 203-270-4335 or visit www.NewtownYouthAndFamilyServices.org, or www.NewtownBee.com and click on the Features tab.