With the Christmas season just around the corner, winter events are slowly starting to pick back up. Garden Plain has been very fortunate to host a vast amount of fun holiday traditions, such as the tree lighting on Beck Field. This year marks the 6 year anniversary of the Council of Hope’s annual light show. The gorgeous light display is normally set up around the second week of November, and is lit right after Thanksgiving.

 When the show first started, it had approximately 8K lights, consisting of 1 tree, 4 snowflakes, and 6 arches. Since then, there has been a great amount of hard work and dedication put into making it bigger and better. Now, there are over 75K lights! The Council of Hope has added 4 singing light bulbs, 1 talking Tow’ Mater, 13 mini trees with stars, a 60’ ground fan, and a set of interactive angel wings where people can take photos. Along with these things, they are very fortunate to get a visit from Santa and his elves yearly on opening night!

Since the beginning, there has also been a mailbox in front of the display in which children can write to Santa to get a reply letter back as well as a gift card for a free kids meal at Sonic, as long as they put a return address on the letter.

Council of Hope plans to add more to their set up each year. As this project grows and becomes even more detailed than before, donating to the Council of Hope is a great way to make that happen. During the past years, they have taken donations through their mailbox and Venmo, yet the money has still not been as sufficient as they wished in order to progress quickly. You can send a donation via Venmo to Council of Hope at Council of Hope Inc. @councilofhope

Council of Hope will be setting up on Saturday, November 11 and Sunday, November 12, at 8:30 AM on Beck Field. If you can’t come out and help set up, they would love to see everyone on November 25 at 5:30 PM to watch the lighting.