Thanks to a new community project, it won’t need to drop below freezing to be snowing in Harrison Township later this month.
To help create a festive atmosphere for Miracle on Main, the new weekend-long holiday shopping event being held in lieu of Lights on Main, the Harrison Township Recreation Commission has partnered with the local school district to host a paper snowflake-decorating project. Finished creations will be hung in shop windows along Main Street.
“I am really excited,” Recreation Commission Vice Chair Alyse Dvorak said. “We were thinking about ways to keep the community spirit, especially right now when people feel like they are separated.”
Typically, the recreation commission hosts a contest with the school district for Lights on Main, whether with essays or pictures, and there are prizes and presentations during the large-scale Thanksgiving weekend event. Even though the event has morphed into something safer during COVID-19, the commission still wanted to get students involved.
Dvorak reached out to Harrison Township School District Superintendent Dr. Margaret “Missy” Peretti and Harrison Township School Principal AnnaLisa Rodano.
“It’s so festive when you see things in windows, and we said, ‘Wouldn’t it be just wonderful if we could combine the kids doing a project at home and then actually seeing it in town?’” Dvorak said. “So then we tried to figure out how we would best do this.”
The school district put the announcement in its weekly newsletter, and the commission posted the information on its website and social media pages to open it to the entire community for participation. There are four different snowflake templates, and artists are asked to draw, decorate or write a message of hope on their snowflakes. Everyone is also encouraged to make extra snowflakes to hang in their own windows at home.
Deadline to drop off snowflakes in a box in front of the municipal building (or to the school district for students) is Nov. 15, which will give Harrison Township Recreation Commission members enough time to hang everything up before Miracle on Main.
“It shows our festive spirit. It’s a show of community,” Dvorak said. “I think it’s important for people to feel connected. I think there’s a lot of people feeling isolated at this time, and it’s important to feel you’re not alone and our community is behind one another and we’re here to help each other. I think it’s just a visual that will help reinforce that.
“Let’s fill the town with snowflakes!”
The snowflake templates are available below, and can also be downloaded from the commission’s Facebook page at www.facebook.com/HarrisonTownshipRecreationCommission.
