The city started putting up the holiday lights on the Green yesterday. The lights will be turned on during the Tree Lighting Ceremony the day after Thanksgiving. It's always breathtakingly beautiful, and the perfect thing to dispel the gloom of winter. I wish they would keep them on until February. The Waterbury Spirit Committee will work with Main Street, the City, the Brass Mill Mall, and Ryan Gomes to provide ice skating during the tree-lighting and for the rest of the season. Following the ceremony, artificial ice will be set up behind the library, on the enclosed courtyard, and skates will be available for free for young children.
Many of the downtown businesses also get into the festive winter spirit and decorate their store windows. Main Street Waterbury will once again this year be holding a Holiday Window Display Competition to encourage and celebrate the spectacular displays. Photos of previous years' displays are in some of my older blog posts--2008 (also with images from the Tree Lighting Ceremony), a few 2007 displays and 2006 displays.
John Bale Books on Grand Street will be hosting a series of free Saturday programs in December: Regina Laudis Scola will perform on December 4; Elaine Schieffer will be doing Christmas Karaoke on December 11; and a wonderfully talented Sacred Heart student will be singing her original songs on December 18.
Also coming up this season is Shakesperience's production of A Christmas Carol, which will be performed Dec. 16th-19th 7pm every night with a 2pm matinee on Saturday and Sunday. And keep an eye out for information about the Festival of Trees and the classic displays at the Howland Hughes Center. Below are some photos from the Festival at Howland Hughes last year. If you've never taken your kids there, you should--Hank Paine does such a great job, especially with the animatronic "activation".
4 comments:
Kudos for trying! But Try as try you might Waterbury will never be as beautiful as it was in it's glory days. Familes would go to shop at all the fine stores dressed festively for the Christmas celebration. The beautiful Creche on the Green, the bells from the churches...a sense of belonging and family neigborhoods supporting their local merchants. It no longer happens. The malls, pathetic attemps to round in all the spenders, can never match the feelings, the pride and the togetherness that once existed in downtown Waterbury. Until something is done about the sad conditions of downtown it will not change.
Sad conditions downtown? I guess you haven't noticed the 18 new appartments on Bank St. The 2 other buildings that have had new facades put on thanks to a Main Street Waterbury program. The work done in the old Apothecary Building. The Spirit of Wterbury Festival that drew a few thousand to the green on a Saturday.
Yes Waterbury has a long way to go, but it is moving in the right direction.
Waterbury will never be what it was--the past is the past. The present can't compete with nostalgia and rosy memories, but I think our downtown is doing really well. I spend far more time downtown than at any mall, and I spend more money downtown than at the mall. There are so many things to do downtown, and every year there are more things happening. Downtown Waterbury is not what it was in the past. Instead, it is actively transforming into something better.
I can say what it is sad conditions we have a long way to go, but I will not change this place for any other one. I am Puertorrican and proud of it but waterbury is my home my safe haven, I been here for 20 years and will not change it for any other place. Proud to be in Waterubry, Connecticut.
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