12 Days of Christmas: Day 5 - Main Street Tree Lighting

In the first weekend of December one of the local towns had their annual Main Street Christmas celebrations.

The evening included a tree lighting, Christmas carols, horse drawn carriages and lots of hot chocolate.

Each shop on the historic down town Main Street stayed opened a few hours late for this special evening. That's actually a very exciting big deal in our small town area where most everything around here closes at 5pm. But on this night everything stayed open till 9pm!

And I'm not just talking about the obvious shops where you could get your Christmas shopping Donne, like the jewelry shop or the book store, I mean everything on Main Street stayed open till 9pm. The lawyers, the tax agents, the furniture store, the other random shops I have no idea what they are. Every shop stayed open and offered treats to anyone one who would wander in. There was hot chocolate and cider and cookies and cupcakes and candy and cheese plates, and even wine tasting at the art shop!

It was truly a wonderful night of the community coming together and just spending time together and celebrating the Christmas season. I really enjoyed the feeling of warm welcomes and comradery that was buzzing up and down the street.

There was also the added joy of seeing people walked out of shops carrying gift wrapped packages. It was incredibly festive.  I told William that next year we are buying everything local (especially at the shops that offer wrapping).

I don't have very many pictures of the evening because we were busy just enjoying it.

In the first shop we went in Elsa from Frozen was there saying hello to all the little girls.  Rosie was very happy about it and wanted her picture taken.

The main thing I wanted the kids to see was the live nativity. It took us a while to walk around and find it but when we finally found it we really enjoyed it.

They even had live sheep, a donkey ...

And camels! 

They also had really lovely live Christmas music. 

In fact the whole street was full of Christmas music. The funature store even had a group of seniors line dancing to Jingle Bell Rock.

It was a cold night and we did stay out later than we normally would, but it was such a fun and festive evening. I am definately looking forward to doing it again next year.