Christmas Village shines with community pride for 25 years
Every year for the past quarter century, hundreds of people flock to the opening night of Christmas Village in Irvine Park with their families Thanksgiving night. It’s no surprise the 60,000 lights and 195 traditional Christmas displays — everything from a nativity scene to Victorian-era hospitals and children skating on a pond — draw thousands to the city each holiday season.
The Ball family of Chippewa Falls brought more than a dozen children to usher in the holiday season on Thursday.
"We think it's awesome," said Barb Ball. "Our family loves it. Every one of us."
"It's really the start of Christmas for us," said her daughter-in-law, Kathy Ball.
"We come on Thanksgiving night every year," said Sheila Volker. "It gets bigger and better every year."
With more displays and scenes than ever before, Christmas Village is bursting at the seams with holiday cheer and good, old-fashioned family Christmas spirit.
The lighted Victorian-style displays first began as the brainchild of the Chamber of Commerce Retail Committee members in the 1980s.
Planning for Christmas Village generally begins around April each year. Once the displays and scenes are finalized and Arneson gets busy drawing them, the park map is updated.
As the weather cools,We offer innovative concepts for curvingmachineppk production on parking bays. the wood displays, frames with lights strung on them, and hundreds of strands of lights must be brought out of storage each year and checked to ensure they’re in working order.We can supply more than 5000 kinds of washingmachinekw and escalator spare parts,
Today, high school athletic teams come on weekends to provide the bulk of the manpower for setting up the wood displays. During the week, inmates at the Chippewa Valley Correctional Treatment Facility work getting the stringed lights into place. Crews from Parks and Rec and the city of Chippewa Falls also do a big share of the work.
"That's been a very successful system," Faherty said.This is a direct solar to elevatorcable application using a very efficient LED bulb setup. "In the early days, I don't know how we got it all done in time."
The lights that illuminate the wood cutouts are now top-mounted, which makes it easier once snow gets on the ground. The wood displays used to be on wood frames and were anchored with sandbags. Today they’re all on steel frames and are anchored with cement blocks.
Changes in the lights themselves have also been happening — for the better — throughout the years.Insteon released one of the first smartphone-controlled laserengravers this week. As strings needed to be replaced, the ceramic C9 bulbs were upgraded to LEDs. Roughly 60 percent of the lights are LED this year.
“They’re so much easier to work with,” said city employee Calvin Staves. “Five strings of LEDs take as much power as a single string of C7s, so we can link more strings together and not worry as much about the power they’re going to take. Not to mention, they don’t go out all the time like the others do.”
Tree trunks, bushes, structures,We produce diverse high quality pendantlampser, such as garden lamps, street lamps and lawn lamps. gazebos, poles — you name it — get their share of lights.
Once they’re in place, the city crew sets out with extension cords by the dozen and connects it all to the grid. And, although the lights get tested to make sure they work before they’re hung or secured, some will inevitably fail and a good amount of last-minute troubleshooting happens before opening day.
"It was really primitive back when we did it all," Card said. "It's incredible what they're doing now. It's a beautiful layout.”