Christmas Calendar

In the middle of the Merry Christmas Village square is a raised gigantic floor of very large squares that makes up the official Christmas Calendar. There are 37 squares (31 for each day of December and six more squares to end the Christmas season on January 6th with the Epiphany). Each square is a 10 X 10 foot picture frame for there is a magnificent painting or photograph on top of each. Each day, starting on December 1st, we begin to reveal the images on the squares. They are covered with matching green-colored canvasses, and at the 6 o’clock bell a new square is revealed with a musical ceremony put on by the snowmen. We do this nightly as we countdown to Christmas – and afterwards as the Christmas season continues. Many of pictures come from artists around the world, and this year the elves included an aerial photograph of the Christmas Village they had taken on a practice flight with the reindeer – They had had stamped out the words in the snow that read “Elves Rock!” I think this was a wonderful, creative way to make a picture for our Countdown Calendar.