Christmas in Crockett Draws Thousands to Houston County
By Greg Ritchie
Messenger Reporter
CROCKETT – It was a busy week for Christmas fans leading into Thanksgiving week. The Downtown Crockett Association held their Christmas lighting and special service and the Houston County Career Women held their gingerbread-inspired parade. The stage was set for the final traditional event to make it official, the Christmas season was, indeed, upon us.
After the cold and rainy event last year and controversy regarding changes in layout, the 42nd annual Christmas in Crockett was held Saturday, Nov. 18 in downtown Crockett. Expectations are always high for the event, the largest in Crockett, which looks to draw thousands to the area to shop, eat and leave a positive economic impact.
Well before the turkey legs were seared and the ornaments displayed for sale, volunteers from the Crockett Area Chamber of Commerce (CACC), local Leos and volunteer students descended on the downtown square before 6 a.m. to get the vendors in safely and efficiently. With 300 vendors to get in, unloaded, set up and move their trucks back out, it takes months of planning, even down to which street the vendors should use to enter and exit.
By a little after 9 a.m., the square was transformed, with booths of all sizes, selling everything from Santa hats to snakes. The chamber was blessed this year – with sunny skies and highs in the low 70’s, the event couldn’t fail to draw people in their thousands.
CACC Executive Director Liza Clark hasn’t yet received the final estimates for attendance, but she guessed the number of visitors was somewhere around 16,000. She said she was thrilled with the event, even though it takes her a few days to recover from the effort.
“I think it was beautiful and the weather was perfect. I spoke to a lot of our visitors and they were having a great time. I spoke to some of our retail shops and they said it was one of their best days,” Clark said. “I’m still kind of recovering from it. I think we all are, but I do think it was a success this year.”
Hosting all of the food vendors who cook food on site in a dedicated area was a controversial proposal which caused some longterm vendors to worry, predicting the idea would fail. Some said no one would visit the food court, some said the food being too far away would hurt the other vendors. In the end, it appeared everyone was neither right or wrong, as visitors didn’t seem to care, finding time and energy to buy many items, including the food.
CACC decided to make the change for several reasons. The dedicated food court would give festival-goers a place to sit and eat, the food lines would not distract from other vendors and the smoke and noise from generators would be contained to one area. The risk of possible fire was also contained in a small space, easier for first responders to contain.
Clark said the expanded footprint of the festival had other benefits for downtown businesses, too.
“It gave everyone more elbow room, which allowed the attendees to actually shop downtown and not get caught in a lot of food lines right around the square,” Clark said. “It helped increase the local economic impact for both downtown and around the city, promoting the businesses and making sure they do well.”
As of press time, The Messenger knows of no major problems, injuries or crimes during the festival, which is not bad, given the number of people welcomed to town. The chamber had an arrangement to have dedicated wi-fi for vendors to take payments, but it ended up not working as intended. Clark noted some changes for next year, as each year teaches the chamber a little more about how to make the event even better.
“We’re going to work on the wi-fi situation. Cell phone service is always poor during ‘Christmas in Crockett’ due to overuse with the amount of people that attend. So we are working to put something forward, even for some of our retail shops that depend on wi-fi or cell service. We had a booth to provide drinks on the square, but they did not come, so we will make sure that is available next year.”
After the events of last week, the great parade, festival and ceremonies – as the old song says, “It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas.”
Greg Ritchie can be reached at [email protected]
