By Robert Lucke

The Big Sandy Chamber of Commerce and Marlys Myers are busy getting ready for the annual Big Sandy Christmas Stroll the first weekend in December.

This year's theme is "Christmas Past". Of course when people think of Christmas Past, they think of their childhoods or their children when they were young and Bing Crosby singing "White Christmas" while gentle flakes of snow decorate the streets and byways of the Big Sandy community.

There is more to Christmas Past than that.

Take the Christmas Stroll Buttons. Elaine Courtnage has decorated and been in charge of taking the theme of the Christmas Stroll and translating it to a button for maybe the last thirty years.

She will not be doing that any more but the Chamber of Commerce and Big Sandy community could think of no better way to honor her than to feature some of her beautiful buttons for Christmas Stroll 2017.

There are two children's buttons featured and six adult buttons. All will be sold for $5.00 each with the proceeds to go toward prizes for Christmas Stroll winners.

The magic of Elaine Courtnage's buttons is that the Chamber of Commerce was able to come up with an annual theme for the stroll each year and Elaine was able to translate that into a beautiful collector's item button.

Elaine made the original buttons out of water colors and Big Sandy Activities took it from there, turning those watercolors into beautiful buttons.

Talk about collector's items. This is a way of honoring Elaine Courtnage through her wonderful Christmas buttons. Get all six plus the two for children and celebrate Christmas Past like you would celebrate the best Christmas of your life!

"What this is all about," added Marlys, " is we want to celebrate Elaine and what she did for the community all those years."

Marlys said that the buttons are on sale now. They are available at Hair I Am, Agri-Prairie, Big Sandy Pharmacy, Senior Citizen's Center, The Grocery Store and the Bear Paw Coffee Shop and Deli.

Every week The Mountaineer will feature an article about the events and going ons that will happen during the Stroll.