Holiday activities are jingling their way into the northwest side in the coming weeks, with Marana and Oro Valley looking to draw crowds with festive shindigs.
Marana kicks things off this weekend with its Holiday Festival and Christmas Tree Lighting ceremony, which goes from 4 to 8 p.m. Saturday at the Marana Municipal Complex, 11555 W. Civic Center Drive. The event offers live performances, arts and crafts and food vendors, as well as free cookies and hot cocoa.
Miss Arizona 2013, Jennifer Smestad ,will host the event, and Mayor Ed Honea and the Town Council will light the tree at 5:45 p.m. Attendees are asked to bring an unwrapped toy to donate to Toys for Tots.
Marana spokesman Rodney Campbell said the 15-year-old festival took on a new life when it moved to the Marana Municipal Complex in 2008 after starting at Ora Mae Harn Park.
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“The park was a big venue. With 500 or 600 people there, the event was really spread out and kind of not the intimate atmosphere we were looking for,” he said, adding that the shift in setting provided that intimacy.
“We decorate the outside of the buildings and put up a huge couple-story Christmas tree up front with packages all around it — really big gifts. People take their picture there and put it on their Christmas cards the next year,” Campbell said.
“Choral groups come here from all over the region. People bring a lot of their parents, grandparents and friends here for the show. Santa and Mrs. Claus come, and snow-making machines start dispensing fake snow. It’s kind of cool.”
tubas take center stage
for OV’s tubachristmas
Oro Valley holds a tree-lighting ceremony of its own in the form of the Winter Festival of the Arts, which is 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday at the Oro Valley Marketplace, at the southwest corner of Oracle Road and Tangerine Road.
The Southern Arizona Arts and Cultural Alliance-backed celebration substitutes voices of carolers for the low, booming sound of the tuba.
University of Arizona professor Kelly Thomas hosts TubaChristmas, a concert at the event featuring as many as 100 tuba players ranging from age 8 to 95 who will play holiday standards.
“It’s a supersonic experience,” he said. “A lot of times people aren’t used to hearing these instruments playing melodies and they’re taken aback.”
Thomas said the tuba-fied rendition of “Jingle Bells” is his favorite.
In addition to the tubas, there will be blues, country, folk and dance performances. Free refreshments will be available and Santa will appear.
In total, more than 100 artists and exhibits will be there, and event host Dan Marries, Oro Valley Mayor Satish Hiremath and others will be there to light a 35-foot-tall Christmas tree. GAP Ministries will hold its Festival of Trees, allowing donations toward purchasing custom-designed trees for children living in group homes.
holiday PARADE hits
the street dec. 14
The ninth annual Oro Valley Holiday Parade starts at 9:30 a.m. Dec. 14 at Ironwood Ridge High School, 2475 W. Naranja Drive. It travels along Naranja until it reaches the Oro Valley Library, 1305 W. Naranja Drive.
Parade director Jackie Devery said the parade will be a boisterous affair, loaded up with school marching bands, cheer groups and rescue vehicles.
Local businesses and antique vehicles will also take part. Catalina Community Services will accept donations of nonperishable food.
“I enjoy it, but it’s a ton of work. There’s such a great sense of community pride. It’s just awesome,” Devery said of staging the parade. “This is a really, really good and important thing for the community, and such fun. It’s a happy day and gets people in such a good mood.”
