Kellogg gets into holiday spirit during festival
Photo by JOSH MCDONALD The Kellogg Christmas Lighting Festival parade had many floats like this one. Kids of all ages sang “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” from the back of the float as it made its way down to Silver Mountain.
Photo by CHANSE WATSON Vendors haggle with customers during the Kellogg Christmas Lighting Festival’s annual craft fair. This year the event was in two locations. Next to the Pizza Palace (donated by them as well) and then in the office building on the corner of McKinley Avenue and Main Street (which was donated by Silver Mountain).
KELLOGG — The yuletide spectacle that is the Kellogg Christmas Lighting Festival once again went off without a hitch, as many folks from the surrounding areas made their way to Kellogg for the day-long event.
The day began with the uptown craft fair, as well as live music and cocoa with Santa Claus at the Staff House Museum while people got some of their holiday shopping out of the way from local crafters, vendors and shops.
New Silver Valley Chamber Director Mallory Phillips was pleased with how the craft fair event went and hopes to see the continuation of the use of uptown Kellogg for events such as this one.
“It was my first year running the craft fair, so I had nothing to compare it to,” Phillips said. “But overall the vendors and patrons seemed happy with having the craft fair location in uptown Kellogg, and we hope to do it again next year in uptown Kellogg.”
Throughout the day, there were other activities for families to get involved in prior to the day’s main event, the lighting festival parade and fireworks.
Winding through the uptown streets of Kellogg on their way to the Silver Mountain gondola base, the parade was a cavalcade of bright colors, Christmas carols and smiling faces.
“The parade went amazing,” Phillips said. “We had 24 floats entered, plus all of the wonderfully decorated EMS vehicles. I was so happy to see so many people come out for it.”
As the parade finished up, the Silver Mountain base was buzzing as hundreds of people sipped free hot cocoa while waiting for the nightcap display of fireworks.
“We don’t have an exact number, but we gave out about 1,000 cups of cocoa,” Phillips said.
Despite the overwhelming success of the festival, Phillips wanted to thank those who helped her, while also imploring the community to get involved.
“I am so grateful for Mikel DeLaCruz and Maggie Valentine for helping run the multiple craft fair locations,” Phillips said. “We need more volunteers. The fireworks are donation based and if we don’t have more people donating, then we might not have them next year. We absolutely love putting these events on, but we were spread pretty thin this year. Overall the event went well, but we hope with more involvement from the community next year, it will be bigger and better.”