The Big Sandy Mountaineer -

This year's Christmas Stroll theme is a Miracle on Main Street. Marless reminded me, "As you know, it's sort of a twist of the Miracle of 34th Street. Santa has to go to court and prove he is Santa, how the kids put up "I Believe" signs in the window. So they will make some signs to say "I believe ."Then we can have them and put them in all the downtown buildings. Yes. And I hope all the kids at home put some up in their windows at home too. You know.....all right, a miracle might be having this tool back again; people that came to help, and things like that. I mean, Christmas miracles happen all the time. Larry finally moved the water heater from the front of my door. My Christmas miracle."

I laughed and told her I wouldn't print that, and she said, "you can because I don't care. I thought I was going to have to decorate it."

Jessie Jaramillo, Big Sandy's art teacher at the high school, came to the CSI Christmas Stroll meeting. She wanted to make everyone's design into a button because she thought the students did such a spectacular job. "We actually ended up picking eight different buttons for adults and 12 different ones for the kids." However, making that many different buttons were problematic, so they dropped it to four winners for each. The four adult button winners are Alleyah Eagleman (9th grade), Jamie Jones (9th grade), Carmen Tan (10th grade), and Caydence Pleninger (12th grade). The four winners for the kid's button are Korbyn Jurenka (7th grade), Harley LaBuda (8th grade), Warren Hartley (8th grade), and Jaxon Jones (8th grade).

"We just got through buying the children's prizes, but we're not totally finished with the adult prizes yet. We already have all the prizes in the bank, and we're negotiating our grand prize for the adults."

"The price for the buttons is up this year. Unfortunately, we increased the buttons' price because everything costs so much. We tried to do as well as we know. All the money from the sale of the buttons goes towards prizes minus our printing cost. We're putting it all into prices; hopefully, we'll sell out like we normally do." So what is the cost? $10 a button, up from $5. "I hope people aren't too put off by that, but everything that we sell on the buttons goes into prizes."

All the people who work this are volunteers. This is a lot of work for people who have volunteered. And so please don't criticize them for the cost of the buttons because they just wanted to ensure we have a Miracle on Main Street. The only way they could accomplish that was to raise the price of buttons because they couldn't afford to do it unless they did.

Kid's button designer winners: Harley LaBuda, Korbyn Jurenka, Jaxon Jones, and Warren Hartley.

The event isn't a fundraiser. "We make a little bit in the end, like a few $100. Thank goodness for the people who sponsor it because that pays for many of the costs. So but it's just, you know, trying to keep a fun tradition in Big Sandy. We

are talking about my memory of this stroll when I first moved here. It is one of my favorite things because everybody remembers all the lights that Jim somehow got up on his building and the Christmas music blaring at all hours of the night. I was so excited about it."

I visited with Rotary, and the Christmas light contest will also occur again this year. Prizes for businesses and private homes alike.

We ended our conversation by visiting about the 'I Believe" signs. It would be great to have them up before the state football game on Saturday!

There are five more benches at the bank to decorate for auction. So pick one up.