A Holiday Festival For The Family

Our list of essential ingredients for a successful holiday celebration has several options: a tree in the parlor, cookies in the oven, a wreath on the door, snow on the ground, music in the air… the list unrolls like a ribbon from the imagination. There is one ingredient, however, that is not optional — a family. Without our families, notwithstanding their many faults and foibles, holidays are hollow and the celebration doesn’t ring true. That is why the annual Holiday Festival is so important to this town. It is a family event, with lots of attractions and activities for adults and kids. It also benefits families struggling to stay strong and stay together in the face of difficulties that threaten to tear them apart. This year the benefit gets doubled.

Newtown’s traditional Holiday Festival on Main Street, scheduled for this Sunday, December 3, is an annual fundraiser for the Family Counseling Center, a nonprofit community agency serving the mental health and social service needs of children and adults living in the Newtown area. The center is in the process of merging with another local service agency, Newtown Youth Services, which for more than 25 years has provided services and resources for the youth of Newtown and their parents. The two groups are scheduled to become a single agency, Newtown Youth and Family Services, on July 1 next year, so this weekend’s fundraiser will help secure the financial footing for this promising new enterprise.

In every community, even towns like Newtown that seem especially blessed with prosperity, educational opportunity, and social stability, families struggle with the consequences of sudden unemployment, divorce, substance abuse, depression, and other mental health problems. Often the struggles are only temporary, but they can permanently damage the bonds that hold families together. The administrators and professional staffs of both the Family Counseling Center and Newtown Youth Services have helped innumerable families make it through tough times intact, providing support services and counseling. Frequently these are families with few resources and nowhere else to turn.

So do your own family a favor by attending the Holiday Festival — it’s the kind of memorable family experience you won’t find at the mall. Take a tour of historic homes, submit a bid at the Festival of Trees at the Booth Library, visit the Children’s Workshop, or watch ballerinas in The Nutcracker Suite or How the Grinch Stole Christmas in the Edmond Town Hall Theatre, browse through the antique show downstairs in the town hall gym, sample tea and refreshments upstairs in the Alexandria Room, or stop by Trinity Church, or The Meeting House, or the Matthew Curtiss House for other holiday sights and sounds. And whatever else you do, be sure to stop by The Giving Tree in the town hall lobby and make a donation that will directly benefit counseling center clients that need financial aid.

The time you spend at the festival on Sunday will help bring your family together. The money you spend will help keep other families together.