Christmas Festival

We had our 2nd (hopefully annual) "Community Christmas Festival" for grade school children. We are located in a small rural community (pop 738) whose high school closed 2 years ago. We enlisted the help of several area churches because we average 22 per Sunday, and we wanted to make this a community event with outreach for all our churches. We used our fellowship hall since it is the largest (and it was our idea.) Popcorn, juice boxes, and water were given free of charge. Activities included crafts, games, pony rides, hay rides,a Wii game, and Santa with free "picture with Santa." About 20 minutes before the end, we served the children cookies and hot choco before they listened to the Christmas story. Then we had a drawing for a couple of prizes- that way we could get names and addresses for mailings of future events.The first year we asked all the churches (and the Lions Club) to donate $50 to help defray the cost of the mass mailing to everyone in the zipcode area. 64 children plus their adults came. After sorting through the kids with church homes, there were about 15 families that came with no church home. This year, we had 2 less organizations that helped, so we decided not to do the mass mailing, and passed out the flyers at the community Christmas parade that occured the weekend before our event. We had 53 children and their adults, with about 10 families without church homes. Besides the cost of water and electricity, we spent another $75 dollars the first year, and $60 this year. (The cost this year went mainly for craft supplies. Both years we paid for the Santa pictures.)