INNISFAIL – There will be no Christmas at the Village this year.
Members of the Innisfail and District Historical Society made the decision to cancel this year’s event.
Christmas at the Village has been a tradition at the Innisfail and District Historical Village for several years.
“The decision was made when they did all their planning last March,” said Kayla Godkin, manager at the historical village. “Attendance wasn’t that great and I know this time of year it’s always really, really hard to organize volunteers. I think that was a large part of it this year too.”
In recent years, the annual event welcomed Innisfail and area families for a look into the past, providing visitors with an old-fashioned Christmas experience that included crafts, hot chocolate, visits with Santa, Christmas music and tractor rides.
Godkin noted the busy time of year for families and volunteers, and pointed to other factors that may have contributed to the board’s decision to cancel the Christmas event.
“Last year I know for a lot of people it was a really hard Christmas, just from a financial standpoint,” she said. “So that, too, might have been a factor.
“We did talk a few times about it. Do we want to do something, do we want to do a supper, do we want to do a tea, or that sort of thing?” said Godkin. “But I think we decided with the amount of volunteers we actually had at our disposal and the amount of resources we had, we were putting our efforts as much as we could into our fall events.”
She said they haven’t ruled out bringing a Christmas event back to the village in the future, but are focusing on possible changes.
“I can’t tell you for certain that we’re going to bring that specific one (event) back, but we have had some people ask if we’re going to do a Christmas event,” said Godkin. “So you might see something in the future.
“One of the things we’re looking at this year is changing up a lot of our programing and a lot of the events that we offer,” she added.
“Part of being in hospitality too, is you’re always having to constantly change what you’re doing and grow with what people want,” explained Godkin.
“It’s something we just need to do anyway every few years, is just revaluate what we’re doing, see what events worked and what didn’t and just grow and change with the visitors coming in,” Godkin concluded.
