17 October 2024
As a member of the Chickasha Festival of Light Board, I have been in several meeting throughout the year planning events for this upcoming holiday season. It’s hard to believe that our nationally recognized Christmas Light Display will be opening up next month. Wow…time is flying by this year! Last year the USA Today recognized the Festival of Light as the Number 2 Christmas Light Display in the entire country. So…what’s next? The Festival of Light Board is calling it North Pole Village. This year in the area North of the dam at Shannon Spring Park, a village will be created full of lights, food trucks, photo ready displays and of course Santa’s Hut with a brand new Santa Sleigh perfect for that family picture. There will also be two tents available for renting every night that the festival if open. Church groups, Christmas parties, and family events will now have a place to reserve and make those special memories. Also new this year, the big tree is being digitized with new lights. The FOL Board entered into an agreement with the University of Oklahoma to introduce the iconic Christmas Tree to the new age of technology. This agreement is a two year project that will start this year with all new lights, but will continue into 2025 by introducing digital programming in time for next summer’s Christmas in July and then again for the 2025 Festival Season. This is a very expensive process that is only possible thanks to the generosity of Liberty Bank. They stepped up to be the major sponsor of all this new technology to the Big Tree! The success of over 3 decades of people enjoying the Festival of Light in Chickasha is possible because of that original group of people that believed in creating something special. Then you add in literally hundreds of volunteers, tons of local sponsors and now we are adding “What’s Next.” We just continue to have new and exciting things happening in Chickasha. “If you aren’t growing, you are dying” was a quote from Senator Lankford when he visited Chickasha recently. He was referencing all the new businesses that have come to our Community recently, but the same can be said about the Festival of Light. EVERY town in Oklahoma would like to be “Christmas Town.” As long as we keep challenging ourselves and asking “What’s Next?” we will continue to see amazing things happen and we will be able to showcase all of #TheGoodStuff!