Kellogg Takes A Page From Dickens Classic
Capes, lacy bonnets, top hats and English accents are the style in Kellogg this weekend.
“Every time I try the English accent, it comes out Irish,” Sharon Waldo wails while her colleague at the chamber of commerce laughs.
For Kellogg’s Dickens Christmas Festival on Saturday, Sharon will become a wool-caped schoolmarm. She’ll stroll downtown streets with the likes of Ebenezer Scrooge, Bob Cratchit, Oliver Twist and Charles Dickens himself.
She’ll nibble on fresh hot chestnuts, sip wassail and warm her hands with hot rocks. And she’ll watch for little pickpockets she’s heard will roam the streets.
“We’re even going to have Gypsies,” says Brenda Stinson, who’s gone crazy the last few weeks stitching costumes befitting the Dickens era.
Kellogg has struggled for a new identity ever since the mines closed 16 years ago. It’s gone Bavarian and “ski-resortish.” But Dickens fits this working town well. Brenda, Joan Block and Theresa Dimico proposed the match in 1993.
“It’s been a long haul,” Brenda says. Her desk at The Silver Needle is elbow-deep in holiday orders. A stack of English bobby hats towers over bolts of dark cloth on a nearby table.
The three women easily imagined Kellogg as a 19th-century English working town during the Christmas season. With help from the Kellogg Alpine Village Association, they began buying costumes and the makings for costumes. Father Christmas in a flowing fur-edged robe was first.
Each December, the women have introduced a few more characters to Kellogg. But their work attracted little attention in town or beyond until this year when Brenda, Joan and Theresa decided to make it big or forget it.
They researched the Dickens era and made costumes close to authentic. They assigned roles and scanned the Internet for wassail and hot chestnut recipes. They planted old English tax collectors, dressmakers and pickpockets with chocolate coins among the crowds.
Interest grew in town - and then in Coeur d’Alene when Dickens characters from Kellogg joined the Christmas parade in the Lake City. They handed out 1,800 invitations to the Kellogg festival.
Brenda, Joan and Theresa added trolley and hay rides, burn barrels on street corners, musical skits in the town square, bell choirs and a puppet show.
“The women really get into it more than the men,” says Theresa, whose Clothes Connection displays entries in the English hat contest. “But the men who do get into it really get into it, and it’s fun.”
Kellogg’s free Dickens Christmas Festival will begin at 5 p.m. Saturday on Main Street. A trolley will take people who park near the gondola to the town square and back. For information, call 784-0821.
Old sounds
Music at St. John the Baptist Orthodox Christian Church in Post Falls isn’t the sing-along type, but it will stir your Christmas spirit - even if you’re not religious.
The church choir sings hymns and liturgical music from the Russian and Byzantine traditions of the Eastern Orthodox Church. That isn’t music you hear every day.
Go expand your horizons at a special concert Wednesday at 7 p.m. The church is at 4750 E. 20th.
Santa’s helpers
Take pity on the poor kids who want to find a great gift for their parents. Spirit Lake did. Civic activists there opened a Santa Shop where kids can buy gifts for a donation of food for the food bank.
All the shop needs is more gifts. Extra coffee cups, unopened bottles of perfume or slippers you never plan to wear are perfect for someone.
Call 623-5224 to find out where to take your valuables. The Santa Shop will be open for shopping from 11 a.m. to noon Dec. 20 in Spirit Lake’s civic center/community center.
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