Good morning, good morning, good morning, and welcome, welcome, welcome. It is time now for our community connection on K one, the one you trust, and from the chamber we have Sherry. Well, then Christmas is in the air.
It is in the air.
It's getting close, closer than ever it is.
We're super excited. Our opening night is this Saturday, so our lights On celebration will be like I said, this Saturday, starting at five thirty down at the Chamber depots Second and Keeler, and we have all sorts of things planned for the evening. Like I said, it starts about five thirty. We have some food trucks there. We have free pictures with Santa. You can also take your own pictures with
Santa and Missus Claus. We have the top train that kids can ride and parents actually fit in the train too, and that's free. We have a living Nativity with live animals, so lots of fun there and oh gosh, what else, movies in the park. There's just all sorts of things happening. The fun part is at six o'clock. Well before that, the high school jazz choir is going to be performing,
so we have live entertainment. And then at six o'clock, we will do the countdown and the big giant Christmas Tree twenty eight fit Christmas tree, and the depot park and the ice rink and everything with the flip of a switch will magically all come and be lit up. And then we start for the season with Christmas in the vills. It's on, it's on, and it's going to go. It's gonna run through January the fifth.
So wow, do we have fireworks this year?
We should. We've had rain, so we should be good.
So you know, that always takes me by surprise because I never equate fireworks with Christmas until I moved to Bartlesfell, and then every year it still takes me by surprise. This year, I'm gonna pretend like I know what's going on.
This time you let a pat out of the bag. But yeah, that's when the lights come on and then there's fireworks over the depot. It makes for great photo ops, actually a beautiful picture. But and then, like I said, it's just so much fun. It's like a giant community party. We have a downtown merchant crawl. So even if you don't ice skate, come down to ice skate. There's so many other things that you can take advantage of. We have our horse drawn carriage. He'll be running too that
evening in fact, and well they're both gorgeous. He's got another one that's just absolutely beautiful this year, and so we'll have our horse drawn carriage rides going. We will have a downtown merchant crawl with fun prizes with some there's some really fun new stores downtown that people will be able to discover. New bookstore Marygolds and Unhinged Lifestyle Boutique of course, Moxie and several others. But it's it's
there's just lots of things to do. So even like I said, even if you don't ice skate, come down. It's just like a giant community party kicking off the holiday season.
It is you know, it was the ice skating rink. It is.
You put it all together that your whole area there is lit up with lights. It's very festive. The depot is the depot and it really just looks great. You even put lights on the train and I don't know how he does that, but they do a spectacular job.
But come dusk it looks like a Norman Rock welpap it does.
And that's what we were after that Hallmark movie. So well, it's the guy that the Lances Landscaping is one that does our lighting and the guy that works with him, Kurt Bashford, has done our lights for the last well every season and he's the one that lights the train up and figured out how to do all that and it does.
I love it.
He puts us blue lights under there and it kind of glows. And so we have, like I said, some great photo op stops for people to just a lot of people come out and do pictures for Christmas there. So just this it's a lot of work has gone into it to get to this point, to get us ready for opening. So many people have helped, like different aspects, setting up the village, moving the skate hut from one end of the parking lot to the others. There's just so many little pieces that go together to get it
all set up and ready to go. But we've been working hard last week and this week even and we will be ready for Saturday night and we are opening. This is earlier. Some people may be going, well wait, wait, wait, that's Thanksgiving. We are opening the Saturday after Thanksgiving, which normally it's it's the week after but the way the calendar fell, it's like we're going to lose a whole week.
So we're going to open, like I said, the Saturday after Thanksgiving, that's when the Lights On party and opening night is. And then those first three weeks Monday through Thursday, we because kids are in school. We just discovered after that first year it wasn't that busy, and so what we did is we reserved those nights for private parties and we booked every there's two parties per night, and
we have every party booked. We do have one opening on next Wednesday, second party, but other than that, we booked all our private parties. And then once kids are out of school on the twentieth, it's opened every day one to nine, but those first three weekends were opened Friday and Saturday from six to nine or Friday, I'm sorry, six to night, and Saturday and Sunday one to nine. And one thing that we started doing a couple of
years ago that's been very popular is family skate. We reserve the rink on Fridays from four to six once kids are out of school, so from four to six it's reserved for kids twelve and under. Parent needs to be regarding you know, someday he had to drop them off and you don't have to skate, but they you know, need to.
Be there with your kid.
Yeah, but it's nice because the rink's not near as crowded and the kids can get out there and you know, they think they're going to go out there and skate like Elsa Anna, and it's not gonna done happen. So it gives them time to kind of to get the feel of it and not be crowded. And it's just it's a lot, it's just a lot calmer time.
And it's a no fourteen year old boys and.
No fourteen year old boys, that's right. So anyhow, so that's for kids twelve me and under and it's every for the first three Fridays from four to six is family skate times, So take advantage of that with your kiddos. It's it's really a special time.
So it truly is.
Now you have a special website that people can go to for Christmas in the bill to find out what's going on for the different dates.
And different times.
Yes, definitely Bartlesville Christmas dot com. Please visit that. It gives our Santa schedule he's there Friday, Saturdays and Sundays. But it gives the hours. I mean, he doesn't just live there. And then our carriage ride schedule when he'll be there, our open hours schedule in case you know you're like, when did she say we were open? It's every All the information is on there, So Bartlesville Christmas dot Com gives you all the information that you could possibly need.
So we got some great sponsors too, and I know we can't get to all of them, but my goodness sakes, but wasn't for our community partners, you know, where would be be?
That is so true. Thank you for bringing that up, because we could not do this without our sponsors. I mean, I know so many events in town say the same thing, but truly, people don't realize how much is involved in bringing in an ice drink and and just the expense of everything. And and it's a risk because your weather determined whether it's too hot or too cold. It can't really be too coold, but I mean if it's just absolutely you know below, we did.
Have one day that it was yeah, way too cool.
They usually were fighting too warm of weather. And thank you to surper they leave us their equipment and we can stay on top of it, and it's rare that we have to close for that, but we are weather dependent and so it's it's our spot. Answers truly, truly
make it happen. And I don't even want to start to mention all of them because I forget, but wonderful companies in our community who support so many things in our community, not just us, not this just as festival, but you know, we have a few that specifically support ours, but just we have a wonderful giving community that is for sure, and they make things like this happen. So we cannot do this without them, because like I said, people do not know how much goes into bringing an
ice rink. It is. There's a lot to it.
So it just doesn't magically appear, turn on a switch and it's gone and going.
That doesn't happen. There's a lot of pre work.
There's a lot of pre work, and I mean there's a lot. There's coils underneath that eye so that people are like, how do you keep that frozen? And there's coils that are hooked up to this giant, giant chilo that's on a semi bed trailer behind the village, which is why we did that the village at the end to kind of you know, so you're not looking at ugly things and give it that atmosphere. But and it's it's plug into the chiller and it's it's just it's
a process. So it's a lot of fun though we enjoy it, and it's it's it always goes so fast for us. And like I said, this year will be up in through January fifth, so lots of time take advantage, you.
Know, about five or six, about five years ago, yes, it was. I remember calling down to the chamber because I had a question for you, and it was around this time of year, and and somebody says, well, Sharry will be with you in a little bit. But we've got like this big Christmas tree out in the front yard. I'm going, what's this? And then that's when I was introduced to Christmas in the Yeah, you know, it was
it was new to me. But moving to Oklahoma, my goodness sake, because I never would imagined that we would have something so nice as this in our town. And it's really something to celebrate and we draw people in.
From all over that and you know, and that thank you again for bringing that up. That is one of
the reasons we did it. We want to keep our folks here obviously, but we wanted to bring people in and last year we had a forty something percent I should have looked by part came, but we had a huge increase are out of town attendees, and that's what we're after because while they're here, they for sure are going to stop and eat, and hopefully they're shopping while they're here too because they've driven in and why you know, why not shop while you're here. And that's what we want.
We want to add to that sales tax space, and that's one of the main reasons we did it because we just wanted to showcase our downtown. So many people, you think, because we work down here and we take so for granted. The beauty of our especially at Christmas. I mean, it's just beautiful thanks to Conaco. Phillips just knocks out the park with all their decorations down there and just how they keep that property. But it just
is beautiful. We just wanted to showcase our downtown. So many people live here, but they never come downtown because they don't work here. And so we hope this drives them downtown and they realize just how special a place it really is down here.
You know, I did a lot of driving this weekend.
I went through a lot of small towns or towns are size for that matter. And when I take a look at ours, buildings are open. We've got businesses that are not only just surviving, they're thriving here, right, But that's not the same everywhere.
We'll go here exactly right, and you don't see a lot of boarded up buildings. You don't see a lot of dilapidated buildings, you don't see a lot of trash. We had somebody to come into the chamber the other day and they're like, your town is just so pretty.
There's just no trash. And I mean I'm going to say there's never any trash anywhere, but I mean they commented on how clean it was downtown, and so that, you know, you just it just makes you proud, and you just you forget, because you know, we see it every day we work down here. You just kind of take it, you know, take it for granted. But it's just a beautiful, especially like I said at Christmas, it's just beautiful down here. There's nothing like taking a horse
drawn carriage ride. The ride they go is very, very pretty, and we really appreciate the businesses you decorate and step it up for the holidays and just make the whole atmosphere magical downtown.
So all right, so Saturday, it is Saturday.
It is.
We hope to see you there five thirties when things start kicking off. But the lighting is at six pm, so there's plenty of free parking all over downtown. It's a Saturday night after Thanksgiving. You should be full of turkey from Thursday. You've black shopped, Friday. On Friday and Saturday you're bored. So come on out to Christmas in Theville opening nights.
All right, the Chamber, This is Sherry we Line, Tom Davis, thank you very much for being on Community Connect.
Thank you, Tom,