This may not be the year for a full Christmas Town

McHugh said in a news release to the DCI that “when we spoke with county health about capacity restrictions for Christmas Town, we learned that they expect the risk level to rise again before our opening date of Nov. 28. This is alarming for us as it is important that we maintain a safe campus for our volunteers and visitors.”

With that, unless conditions quickly stabilize or improve, McHugh reported that SCVHS has cancelled the vendor activities, as well as Saturday's planned tree lighting ceremony. While vendor activities would be doable in the county’s current status of level yellow/concern, they would not be feasible in the likely oncoming level orange/high risk or red/severe risk.

“All choir events are also being cancelled until conditions improve,” the news release said. “Please feel free to check with us if levels return to yellow or below, or to retrieve anything that may have been left at Pioneer Town. We are truly sorry for any hardship this may present, but your health and safety are important to us.”

At this time, the Pioneer Town volunteers are still working to light up the giant tree by the chapel, and to decorate other parts of the museum in holiday lights. DMEA was recruited to light the tree, and they arrived late Monday morning to do so.

Therefore, current plans for Christmas Town are the lights, with absolute certainty, as well as preemptive plans for some smaller concerts with “very limited audiences.”