By Dave Babbitt – Special to the Sydenham Current
As the Christmas season is now upon us, I’d like to wax nostalgic about a topic that is very near and dear to my heart, as well as hundreds of others. I’m going to focus on the largest project I’ve ever had the pleasure of being a part of. To be clear, this is not a “look what I did” story, but a “look what I had the opportunity to take part in” story.
I’ve been involved in some large-scale musical productions such as The Sound of Music, Grease, and Oklahoma, and the Wallaceburg Concert Band has grown into a monster project, but as time-consuming as those projects were and are, they pale in comparison to the effort that went into what hundreds of students and our community came to know as “The Christmas Show.”
Much like the Wallaceburg Concert Band story, the Christmas shows began with a germ of an idea that somehow grew into something far bigger than imagined. Being a big fan of Christmas, when I began my teaching career at WDSS in 1984 I knew that I wanted to have our bands do something special for the Christmas season for our community.
I’d always felt that there should be a tight connection between schools and the community they are in, so in the fall of 1985 I decided to attempt to put something together that WDSS and our community could work together on. I knew that whatever we decided to do, parents would attend of course, but that we should aim higher than that.
Everyone who’s ever organized an event knows that if you want to attract a crowd, include as many members of the community as possible and especially, children. So that’s what we did.
I quickly put together a program of music, screwed together some old wooden boxes left behind by the then defunct Rotary Community Carol Sing to make a small stage in the middle of the east wall, borrowed some choir risers for one corner of the gym, put handbell choir tables in the opposite corner, the school band on the traditional stage, took out a couple of newspaper ads and on December 7th 1985, launched what became a multi-year run of Christmas shows.
We titled that first show “Christmas to Me,” a song title we borrowed from a Statler Brothers Christmas record.
I don’t recall what we did for decorating, but I’ve always believed in creating a warm atmosphere in any productions I’m involved in, but more on that later. In pulling out the program from that first show, performers included the H.W. Burgess Choir (directed by my former music teacher Shirley Sewell), John Worthington, Cathy Whale, the First Baptist Church Bells of Praise Handbell Choir, the Trinity United Church Choir (directed by David Mann), a few WDSS small ensembles, a Christmas sing-a-long led by Lois Myers and of course, the WDSS Concert Band.
The audience that evening was far larger than we had anticipated, giving us hope that we could build on that the following year.
Build on it we did and the 1986 show saw a comfortably full Webber Auditorium resulting in the need to turn away dozens of people we could not fit into the gym due to fire regulations. Based on demand, in 1987 we decided to add a second show and the following year a third.
In time, the demand for seats became difficult to manage so we decided to distribute free tickets ensuring patrons of a seat for one of the shows so that people wouldn’t have to line up in the cold, only to be told that there was no room for them. We set up a table to distribute the tickets at the Zeller’s mall on a Saturday, and they quickly disappeared every year.
We likely could have added a fourth show, but we couldn’t take any more time away from the Phys. Ed. Department, who needed the gym every period of every day.
I was adamant that when people came to our shows, they would be welcomed by a warm, nicely decorated atmosphere, and that even pre-show music be carefully chosen, and so the epic story of the decorating began.
I tasked Lynn McCreary to head up the decorating crew, and each year began by choosing a title then taking our Band Executive on a trip to Bronner’s in Frankenmuth in a Pollock Truck Rental’s van to peruse decorations, get ideas, take pictures, then figure out how to make our own. Imagine taking that trip today!
From late September until showtime in early December, we had a crew working almost every weeknight as well as several weekends, building props, stages, making snowflakes, building frames then laying out and painting the backdrops. Dave Ardis, Rodney Ewing, and Lynn led the charge in creating elaborate motorized displays by cannibalizing washing machines, windshield wiper motors and anything with a small electric motor.
Today, there are all kinds of motorized Christmas figures that can be purchased relatively inexpensively but those folks were incredibly talented and, in my mind, pioneers.
My goal was to eventually see the school “disappear” as we added more decorations in the gym each year and eventually moved outside of the gym into the hallways, and in time outdoors, so that attendees would sense something special as they approached the school.
We built “Santa’s Station” as a ticket-taking booth, hung Christmas flags outside the entrance, piped music outside and even had people dressed as toy soldiers in guard booths outside the entrance.
Eventually, the display cases in the hallway were covered and painted, wooden porches and awnings added to make them look like storefronts, then local businesses such as Westbrook’s came to the school to decorate each of the display cases.
We added a beautiful Elf Workshop that was staffed by beautifully costumed children who were painting and assembling wooden toys that they would give to small children. There was even an elaborate penguin display (thanks to Sarah Hind) complete with running water.
I do not have the space to describe everything that was made, but it was spectacular, and all made from scratch. Once everything was in place in the hallway, we put down literally barrels of white Styrofoam packing chips as artificial snow, added some music and the entrance to WDSS became truly magical.
I’ll continue my recollections of the WDSS “Christmas Shows” next time.
