Getting ready for Christmas means getting ready for the spirit of the season in every sense … in both giving and receiving
Dawson ushers in the secular pre-Christmas season just before the ecclesiastical season of Advent, with several weekends of craft bazaars, supplementing the buying needs of those who will certainly make an early winter pilgrimage to Whitehorse and fill Canada Post with mail order packages for Amazon, Best Buy, Costco, etc., the way they used to fill up the back room at the Dominion Store with packages from Simpsons-Sears.
The first, largest and oldest of these fairs, the Community Christmas Bazaar, took place on November 19 from 11 to 4 at the Robert Service School Gymnasium, sponsored this year by the school and organized to raise funds for the Grade 12 class.
There was a plethora of baked goods, preserves, jewelry, leather goods, glass creations, pottery, clothing, knitted or crochet work, photographs and artwork.
There was an ongoing cakewalk contest and 50/50 tickets.
During the same time frame, St Paul’s Anglican Church transformed Richard Martin’s Memorial Chapel into a smaller venue and sold lots of baked goods, clothing (especially baby items), knitwear and Christmas-season items. There were also items in the Thrift Store next door.
The next weekend, November 25, the KIAC (Dënäkär Zho) Ballroom metamorphosed into a third bazaar venue with more of an emphasis on handmade goods: glass creations, woodwork, knitted toques, jewelry, artwork, creations from the Yukon School of Visual Arts and the Klondike Institute of Art and Culture.
There was also a selection of lunch goodies and a craft table for the kids.
This year, the Dawson City Museum’s Open House, from 5 to 8 on December 1, added a craft-fair component, along with live music, goodies in the gift shoppe, door prizes every 15 minutes, kids’ crafts and ornament creation in the audio-visual room, and 10 craft vendors—some of whom were on their third weekend by this time. Oh, and there was the possibility of a visit with Santa in the courtroom upstairs.
The final bazaar in the series took place on December 2 in the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in Community Hall (Äłät Nëhëjël) between 11 and 4. Some of the same vendors were on display again, but there was more of an emphasis on First Nations wares. There was also a Chase the Ace contest.
