Organizations find innovative ways to continue Christmas traditions

Reeti Meenakshi Rohilla - Staff Writer

Keeping Christmas bazaars and craft fairs from disappearing this season amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, organizations turned to innovative ways of keeping the holiday spirit alive.  
A long-standing Sioux Lookout tradition, the annual Christmas Arts & Crafts Fair, presented by the Friends of Cedar Bay and the Sioux Lookout Chamber of Commerce, was conducted virtually on December 5 and 6 this year. Chairperson Joyce Timpson said, “One thing that makes it impossible to do during the pandemic is there are so many people coming. So, the members of the Friends of Cedar Bay just wanted to keep the spirit alive and we decided to go online. We had 19 vendors sign up, and we only asked for a $10 registration fee. We just wanted to keep it going. We weren’t worried about making a lot of money.”
The Chamber of Commerce set up a Facebook page for the fair, where vendors were asked to sign up. Timpson said, “We required every vendor to publish what their pandemic protocols would be.” Timpson shared that they had to deal with some glitches of moving online, “However, it all worked out well.”
Originally, the Facebook page for Sioux Lookout’s Christmas Arts and Crafts Fair was created specifically for the duration of the event. However, Timpson shared that they plan to keep it running for as long as the vendors continued to post and there was interest among the community to purchase. Anyone looking to shop can visit the event’s Facebook page at Sioux Lookout Christmas Arts and Crafts Fair. Timpson shared that vendors who may still be interested in signing up can do so by emailing her at [email protected], along with a fee of $10, outlining their pandemic precautions. She added, “Also, the Fair is only for original crafts of the vendor, not a 3rd party business. We will approve it when we get the information.”
Timpson said, “Some items were easier to sell online and some vendors did really well. Others, who usually do well with the in-person sale, often reported that they had fewer sales this year. But overall, I want to thank the vendors for their patience and working with us on this experiment and if we have to do it again, we will learn a lot from this round. Hopefully, next year we will be meeting in person, back to normal.”
St. Mary’s Anglican Church conducted its annual Christmas Bazaar & Bake Sale virtually this year. Held on November 28, the sale ran from 10 a.m. to 12 noon, with same-day pickups scheduled between 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. Muriel Anderson, a deacon at the church said, “It was a big adjustment. We went from a gathering that usually involved 300 people, with tea and sandwiches and dainties, to virtual.”
The sale offered people an opportunity to choose from baked goods, candy trays and $5 surprise gift bags. Anderson said that, first thing on the morning of their sale, they began to post all their goods to the Sioux Lookout Buy and Sell Facebook page, to allow people to start placing their orders. She said, “The orders were put together, and starting at 2 o’clock, people drove by and picked up their orders, paid with the right amount of change, or we did offer to be able to pay via EMT as well, and that worked out extremely well.”
Anderson said, “We were totally pleased with the overall support that we had. People were amazing, and by the end of the day, most of our goods were sold. We found it to be a pretty relaxing day. I think there were about eight of us that managed to operate the whole thing. We said in the end that it was much more relaxed than having the Tea and Bazaar Sale, where there would be a lot of people.” She added, “Even though being in-person with the community is so much nicer, we just can’t do that right now.”
St. Andrew’s United Church also successfully hosted its annual Christmas Tea and Bazaar, which was held on November 21. Vera Kameda-Lacroix, a member of the church who helped organize the bazaar, said, “It’s always been an event that all of us looked forward to participating in, sitting down and having tea.” She added, “We’ve gotten braver about doing something like that. Of course, it’s quite a different look for what we’ve had for many years.”
Lacroix shared, “The first concern was, how do you do it safely? How do you do it within the regulations?” She added, “When in the kitchen, we have to follow cleanliness code just for starters, never mind all of the keeping COVID-safe, distancing from each other and wearing masks and gloves and wearing all the appropriate protection.”
Lacroix shared that another challenge that they faced was to estimate the expected number of people that might come, and so, the quantity of food that they would be required to prepare. She said, “What we did was we took pre-orders online and by phone and that started to give us an idea about how much we needed.” She added, “People could virtually purchase their whole tea in a package and take it home and have it.”
Lacroix stated that they had received 150 pre-orders, and after opening for the walk-in sales from 2 p.m. until 4 p.m., they sold over 60 more. “So, we set up the table in the Peace Park in St. Andrew’s (United) Church.” She added that her number one priority was making sure that the food was prepared safely and that everyone had fun. “We’re all learning. But for us, the main thing was that the event happened and the people had fun. We got lots of great comments about what was in the packages. People thought that the preparations were generous and the taste was good. People bought two or three packages and took them home to set up tea at their own house and send pictures back to the church of everything being set at their tables. So, it was good that it happened.”
Sioux Lookout Area Aboriginal Management Board (SLAAMB)’s
annual Christmas Season Bake and Craft Sale held on November 20 offered a joyous, pre-Christmas, in-person bazaar for local vendors to sell their goods. SLAAMB’s Coordinator, Mary Tait said, “It was very busy in the past years. We had a lot more vendors than we did this year.” She added that since it wouldn’t allow for enough space for safe distancing to have more tables in the central area. “We had to move some of them to the lobby, three or four of them in a big classroom and three in the kitchen area. It wasn’t together; it was as if we were separated. But it had to be that way because of the regulations and the pandemic.”
Tait said that it was a successful event and that it was a pleasure to get to see people participate, and bring the spirit of the season alive. While SLAAMB was fortunate and satisfied to be able to conduct the sale late November, Tait shared that they decided to cancel their Bake and Craft Sale, also scheduled to be held in December. She said, “We had to cancel on December 4 and December 11, because of the reported cases in our area and the neighbouring communities.”