Christmas carols and sleighbells could be heard along 2nd Street on Small Business Saturday. Shops and restaurants opened their doors to the cold and Hastings residents perused storefronts and took refuge inside for the annual Holiday Hoopla. The Holiday Hoopla, a staple of the Downtown Business Association’s calendar, is a chance for small businesses to have their say in the holiday shopping season, sandwiched between black Friday and cyber Monday, a trio of the busiest businesses days nationally.
In downtown Hastings, horse-drawn wagons ferried bundled up children back and forth from Oliver’s Grove. The horse teams were provided in part by Lazy K. Ranch out of Kenyon, MN by Bryan and Mary Hagen.
Within Oliver’s Grove, Patty Reuter tended the fire and laid out rows of graham crackers and chocolate waiting for roasted marshmallows. In the barely double-digit weather, marshmallows froze sitting out on the table.
Reuter says she was tapped a dozen years ago by for marshmallow duty at the Holiday Hoopla due to family’s extensive sampling of different types of s’mores. “We’ve tried every type of candy,” said Tom Schafer, another worker at the event. Schafer noted that the superior s’more recipe required Ghirardelli dark chocolate, but the classic milk chocolate was still more popular.
The Legion hosted a craft fair where only hours before had been the Gobblegait’s registration room. Vendors selling holiday decorations to cosmetics to cleaning supplies set up there. One such vendor was Meghan Pinder, selling crocheted mittens designed to hold onto beverages in the cold called the ‘drink mitt.’ Hastings’ Vikings fans were out en mass because by 1:00, Pinder was already almost out of the purple and gold variety of the glove.
Over at ArtSpace River Lofts, residents decorated tree ornaments beside the other craft fair of the Hoopla. Among the artisans at the ArtSpace craft fair was Simone Rendon, a resident of the building and organizer of many of the events there. Rendon creates and sells natural products like jams and jellies ranging from sumac to strawberry to hot pepper. Rendon gathers much of the ingredients from her products herself from around the area. Several of the dreamcatchers displayed are the lobby of the River Lofts building were made by her.
Rendon spoke to getting more events on the calendar for the building including a ‘lovers craft affair’ in February, and an event in May for Indian Heritage Month.
At 4:15 p.m. to the setting sun the elementary and middle school choirs set up at the pavilion. Parents standing in snowmobiling suits and bundled beneath scarves watched the children perform songs like Frosty the Snowman, Jingle Bells and We Wish You a Merry Christmas. At the event, City Councilor Jen Fox spoke to the work done to put on the event the others like it from the Downtown Business Association, of which she is part: “It’s about creating community from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.,” said Fox about the Hoopla.
After the event, crowds stayed on 2nd Street to watch the town’s holiday lights turn on for the first time before going to city hall for the city’s tree lighting. The “lickety-split,” ceremony according to Mayor Mary Fasbender, was expedited due to the cold with the children’s choir from Our Savior’s Lutheran Church providing one last song of holiday cheer before the lights when up on the city’s tree.