Starting with New Year’s Eve and continuing each weekend through the end of February, winter celebrations are popping up all around southern Maine. The events are a reason for residents to come out in the cold, enjoy the community and check out local businesses. The more long-standing of these celebrations show just how successful they can be, and provide a blueprint for communities looking to have some winter fun of their own, and kick up local commerce at the same time.
The winter events really get going Dec. 31, as New Year Gorham has grown in a popular annual event drawing people from around the region. Looking to create the same sort of celebration, the inaugural Westbrook Winter West Fest was held last weekend, featuring sled dog races, a family skate night at the city’s outdoor rink, free horse and wagon rides, and a snow sculpture contest, among other activities. Bill Baker, Westbrook’s assistant city administrator, said he estimated there were a few thousand people in attendance.
“Clearly there was a beneficial impact on businesses in the downtown area, and that’s really what we were hoping for,” Baker said.
The Scarborough Winter Festival is scheduled for Saturday, Jan. 19, beginning at noon at the ice rink and high school sports field. There will be skating, a bonfire, fireworks, snow sculpting, and much more.
Biddeford will be celebrating its WinterFest, previously known as La Fete d’Hiver, Feb. 1-3. Mayor Alan Casavant, one of the sponsors of the event, said, “Biddeford is in the midst of positive economic and cultural changes and WinterFest is a way of bringing the community together to celebrate our diversity and our future.”
In the Sebago Lakes Region, winter almost rivals summer as a hotbed of activity. There’s the Crystal Lake Derby in Gray (set for Jan. 26), the Musher’s Bowl in the Bridgton area (Jan. 25-27), the Naples Winter Carnival (Feb. 9), and of course, the Sebago Lake Rotary Derby Feb. 16-17, featuring the polar dip that each year raises thousands of dollars for the Maine Children’s Cancer Program. In total, the events bring thousands of people to the Lakes Region.
But there is some danger to scheduling these events. Sometimes winter just doesn’t cooperate. The Sebago Lake derby has been postponed a number of times due to unsafe ice conditions, and just last year, as the Rotary Club of South Portland-Cape Elizabeth was forced to delay the first-ever Winter Festival by two weeks after the snow failed to fall and Mill Creek Pond to freeze over.
The city will not host a second Winter Festival this year, after the Rotary Club declined to continue its role running the show. City Manager Jim Gailey said the city won’t attempt to stage the event on its own. However, Parks Director Rick Towle said the event may return next year.
“We are internally as a department planning for such an event in 2014,” he said. “We will gather public input as well as seek partners in the process once we have a better idea of the overall scope.”
Here’s hoping that comes together for next year, and that each of these events continue to be successful, giving communities and their businesses a reason to celebrate the winter, rather than wish it away.
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