Christmas Dinner

If you are looking for a Christmas dinner tomorrow,  St. Francis Xavier is offering a free take out meal from noon to 2 p.m. Just come by the Elm Street entrance to Xavier Hall.

Christmas

 Given the kickoff to the season in Carbondale that the Lights Fantastic parade provides, the city and local organizations should take advantage of that attention with a "Christmas in Carbondale" or some similar page listing all of the Christmas related events taking place in the city through the season. Something similar to Carbondale Halloween, making the city's downtown a focus of Christmas related activities.

Holiday Lights Contest

 The city is sponsoring a holiday house lighting contest. Send in a photo of your house and your residence will go on a map showing all of the entries and may win a $100 gift card from Ace Hardware

Chirstmas Decor

 Wonder if the city plants to leave the lighted trees and revolving sculpture in the town square.  All of the other Christmas Decorations have been removed save those. Of course, I still see a suprising number of Chirstmas decorations in people's yards. Almost all of them are usually gone by this time of the month.

Christmas Lights

 Time for my annual complaint about the lack of Christmas decorations in Carbondale. I drove through the north side of Carbondale last night and and maybe 10% of the houses had some form of exterior Christmas lighting. S. Glenview has some pretty nice lighting but even their they are pretty sparce. I have not driven the Tower Road area yet though so am not sure as to the lighting situation there.

Christmas Lights

The city has very efficiently moved from Halloween to Christmas. Driving home the night before Thanksgiving, I noticed the Halloween street banners had been replaced with Lights Fantastic ones and all of the downtown Christmas lighting had been installed.

After past Lights Fantastic parades , some of the floats have been left for viewing along New Era Road and on the grounds of the Park District's Hickory Lodge. It is likely too late to do so this year but maybe next year the floats could be left in the Washington Street Event space. Power has been installed there, in order to run the stage shows so it could be run to the floats and, after the Lights Fantastic parade, that space, both the grassy area and lot, sit pretty empty so why not put them to some use duirng the holiday season?

Lights

 I noticed the city added more lights to the town Square this year. One of the trees to the east of the freight depot has lights running through its branches and up its trunk. Not as showy as the one at the corner of Springer and Main but nice nonetheless.

Christmas Lights

 Seeing Christmas lights and deocorations going up early than I remember. Hickory Lodge has trees lit up near the building, the Thrift Shop has a Chirstmas display in its front window and the city installed the rotating childrens' Christmas memorial on the town square this week.

Downtown Christmas Day

 Was tooling around downtown Carbondale after service Chirstmas Dinner at  St. Francis Xavier Churst and was bemused tonotice that the only places open, besides mine, were alcholol related establishmented. ABC Liquor, Hollywood Lounge and PK/s all were open and had customers. Of course, PKs does advertise on its sign that it remains open 365 days a year (usually).

Cookie Walk

 Carbondale Main Street did a fine job promoting the cookie walk last Satureay, we had roughly 150 people through the doors at the store between 4 and 5. As the time for the parade drew closer traffic dropped dastically, of course, but still we had about 18 dozen cookies ready to go and ended the night with about 2 dozen. Note to self, gluten free and oatmeal raisin cookies the least popular.

Halloween and Christmas

 Seeing decorations for each up now. I am rather surpirsed to see at least 4 houses in town with Halloween decor still up.  At least they are outnumbered by the houses with Christmas lights and decorations up.

Christmas Banners

 Looks as if Christmas is almost over. The city is out taking down the Christmas banners handing on Illinois Ave. I still see quite a few houses with lights on them and at least 2 Nativity scenes. I do hope the city decides to leave the lights up on the light poles around the square as they certainly brighten it up after dark.

Christmas Dinner

 St. Francis Xavier served its annual Christmas dinner yesterday. Due to COVID-19 all meals were delivered or to go. The church delivered 140 meals to Carbondale residents' homes and 225 "to go" meals to people who came by the church. For the first time in at least a decade, the church ran out of turkey, serving 8 trays of it, 7 trays of dressing, 10 trays of whipped potatoes, 9 cans of restaurant sized green beans and 32 gallons of gravy. 

Star

 If you want a good look at the conjunction tonight, some good locations are Evergreen Park, North Oakland by Oakland Cemetery and Campus Lake near the boat docks.

Christmas Tree Lots

 Following up on yesterday's post about lights, I just realized no Christmas tree lots this year. Typically we have at least one out at Murdale Shopping Center, one in the Hobby Lobby parking lot and one out by Qin Guan. This year, not a one that I have seen in Carbondale.

Christmas Lights

 I am seeing more Christmas lights in town this year and they went up earlier than in previous years. I saw lights on houses up as early as October. The Light Before Christmas, a professional Christmas lighting company, says I am not crazy and people did put up lights much earlier than in a typical year.

Downtown Cookie Walk

 Apparently Carbondale Main Street will host a downtown cookie walk tomorrow. Cannot find any information about it on their website or Facebook page. The plan is to have a map posted somewhere and tables with cookies set up in front of participating businesses. No idea what time though. 

Lights Fantastic and Other Holiday Events

 Looks like some of the traditional Carbondale Holiday events will take place this season:  lighting of the Christmas tree and the downtown cookie walk. In stead of a parade, some of the Lights Fantastic floats will park in the concert venue along South Washington Street. Much like the downtown Trick or Treating event, it appears that Carbondale Main Street will set up tables with cookies in front of participating venues throughout the downtown area and provide a map to those locations. I guess that means the businesses will not be expected to provide their own cookies this year. 

Apparently there will also be the traditional Holiday Window Contest as well but have not heard anything about any of these events other than the mention in the Southern.

Christmas Lights

 Looks as if we are just going to ignore Thanksgiving for the most part this year. SIH Memorial Hospital put up lights along University and Main this week and I have seen lights appearing on houses throughout town for the last couple of weeks. The revolving memorial that graces the town square every holiday season also got installed this week.

Christmas Decorations

I notice that there are still a surprising number of houses and businesses that still have Christmas decorations and lights up. By my count, at least 17 places in town still have something up, including 3 houses on Old 13 West of Carbondale.