Two Annandale area traditions will usher in the Christmas season this weekend. The sights and sounds of the season will fill the Annandale Fire Hall for the Old Fashioned Tree Lighting on Friday, Dec. 3, from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. Then Minnesota Pioneer Park will celebrate the customs of the people who settled this area at Immigrants’ Christmas on Saturday, Dec. 4, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Among new features at the park this year will be Chester, the Christmas Dog. Sixth tree ceremony The tree lighting will be the sixth one sponsored by the Annandale Area Chamber of Commerce since 1999. The fire hall, emptied of firefighting equipment, will be decorated with Christmas trees adorned with ornaments created by Bendix Elementary School students. As the Annandale High School band plays and sings Christmas carols, Mrs. Claus will be there to greet the youngsters with a gift and help serve hot chocolate, cider and cookies. More than $1,000 worth of gift certificates will be given away as part of the chamber’s Shop at Home promotion. Annandale royalty will be in charge of drawing the winners’ names. To be eligible to win, people must register at one or more chamber businesses and be present at the tree lighting party. A full page ad inside the Advocate lists which businesses are participating. Finally, Mayor Marian “Sam” Harmoning will flip a switch to light up 1,200 bulbs that decorate the tall evergreen tree just north of the fire hall from top to bottom. Last year’s event attracted an estimated 350 to 400 people, said chamber president Marlene Young, and she hopes as many attend this year. Last time at old fire hall It will likely be the last time the party takes place in the fire hall since it’s been sold for development into retail shops. “We’re looking into using the city hall parking lot (next year) and tenting it with heaters,” Young said. The new fire hall on Poplar Avenue at Park Street may be too far from downtown, she said, but it could be a possible site for the event if there’s a suitable tree there. Immigrants’ Christmas will be presented for the seventh time at Pioneer Park since 1998, but there will be some new features this year, said board of directors president Marilyn Gordon. Not only will Santa be there to meet the youngsters from 12:30 to 2 p.m., he’ll bring his new helper, a big, black Newfoundland dog named Chester. Organizers also plan to hand out ethnic recipes and lists of the ethnic customs portrayed by interpreters throughout the park. A reading of “The Legend of the Candy Cane” will be presented in the school building, Gordon said, and the park hopes to have a display of Father Christmas-Santa Claus figures in the Big Woods building. As in past years, reindeer from the Hemker Wildlife Park in Freeport will give free sleigh rides from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Park volunteers will sell homemade baked goods including ethnic items. Beef stew and Native American fry bread will be sold in the Big Woods building. The gift shop in the train depot will have gifts for the holiday season. Admission will be charged for the event, but youngsters age 12 and under with an adult will be admitted free. Different buildings at the park will depict each group that settled Central Minnesota. A Christmas tree will be decorated with the kind of ornaments they used, and costumed interpreters will explain their customs. Not only that, visitors will usually receive a sample of some kind of ethnic food pertaining to each group. The Victorian English exhibit will be upstairs in the Big Woods building and will depict settlers of English, Irish and Scotch background. “There weren’t a lot of them but there were some in the area that came around the time of the Civil War,” Gordon said. Among English customs was hanging lots of shiny gold ornaments on the tree. Scandinavian exhibit The Scandinavian exhibit will be in the newly refurbished Sorenson Cabin, while the Finnish will be in the Finnish church. “Scandinavians, particularly the Swedish, settled south of here,” Gordon said. “The Finnish settled what is the French Lake area now.” Scandinavians made figures out of straw and hung food on a tree outside for the birds. Those groups arrived from the 1880s until the first decade of the 20th century, she said. The German Christmas will be on display in the 1902 House. “The Germans were north of Annandale in the Corinna Township area,” according to Gordon. They came from the 1880s until about 1910. “The Germans are the ones who started the custom of the decorated Christmas tree.” The French will be depicted in the log cabin attached to the 1902 House. French fur traders came to the area in the early 1800s, and later there were some French settlers. It’s known that French people lived in that cabin because French language newspapers dating to the late 1800s were found covering the walls, Gordon said. The American pioneer era from about 1880 to 1910 will be depicted in the school. It’s not a separate ethnic group but a combination of customs from the various groups. Among traditions of that era were making corn husk dolls for gifts and decorations and stringing popcorn and cranberry ropes to decorate the Christmas tree. They had to make the items, Gordon said, because they couldn’t buy them. “Christmas was a big celebration” for all the cultural groups, she said, and the country schools were at the center of it. Though it’s not related to settlement of the Annandale area, a Ukrainian exhibit will be displayed in the Big Woods building by Ed Skomoroh, a new member of the Pioneer Park board. Ukrainian immigrants settled in the Canadian provinces of Manitoba and Alberta and in Illinois because of the unrest in Europe before both world wars, he said. Gordon said the park hopes to also have an exhibit representing the Dutch people who settled in the Silver Creek area about the turn of the century and a little later.
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