The Holiday Festival: A Celebration Of Light

In these final frantic weeks before Christmas, it is not uncommon for moods to darken a bit as the list of things to do before the holiday stretches out somewhere past Groundhog Day. But the season is supposed to be about brightening spirits, so what’s a retail-weary soul to do?

The ancient pagan festival of Sol Invictis, which the Roman Christians supplanted with Christmas in the 4th Century, celebrated the invincible sun, which starts its journey north to incrementally lengthen our days on December 21. With a long winter ahead of us, however, we need something more than a few extra minutes of sunshine to boost our spirits. Despite all the ribbons, bows, and canned music, we don’t think we’re going to find much lightness and levity at the mall. That’s why the Family Counseling Center’s annual Holiday Festival has become such an essential part of our holiday routine.

The festival is this Sunday, December 5. Each year it fills Main Street and other nearby venues with people drawn by arts, antiques, crafts, dancing, musical performances, and genuine sights and sounds of the holidays. After taking in the decorations on the tour of homes and at the Festival of Trees at Edmond Town Hall, people may revive themselves with homemade scones and tea in the Victorian Tea Room in the town hall’s Alexandria Room, or pizza and soft drinks at the New England Café in the undercroft of Trinity Church. Then it’s back out on the sidewalks in search of more to do, or buy, or experience. This year a student arts and crafts show and sale has been added at the high school. And the best part of the day is meeting and greeting friends along the way.

Aside from whatever personal pleasure we may take away from this event, it is good to remember what we leave behind. The Holiday Festival and the formal gala dinner dance the night before are the two main fundraising activities of Newtown’s Family Counseling Center for the year. The center annually provides counseling and psychiatric services to hundreds of clients regardless of their ability to pay. For many people, whose world is darkened by depression and other mental disorders, the Family Counseling Center is a beacon — not just in the dark days of December, but every day of the year. The Holiday Festival helps make that beacon invincible. For this reason, above all others, the event never fails to brighten our outlook and restore our enthusiasm for the holiday season.