Merry Christmas You!

Merry Christmas You!

While on the subject, this is a Christian
community. Crystal Falls had a public event
this season with the word Christmas playing
a predominant role, as did Caspian.

Iron River stands alone in taking the secular
progressive posture of involving government
funds and then removing the name of the
Christmas holy day from the original name
for the celebration of "Christmas in Lights"
as it was called the first year (because
Julie Melchiori was out of town at the
moment the ads were written and placed in
the paper and on the radio.)

Because of the flap over the name the second
year, I publicly offered $100 towards the
maximum of $1000 that Iron River's DDA
provides annually to fund the advertising.

Frankly, as news starved as our outlets are
for local news it seems to me that advertising
costs could be zero if the event were covered
as a local news item, something that's done all
the time by Iron Mountain and Iron River
newspapers as well as our radio station WIKB,
and WLUC-TV channel 6. Why involve government
money in the first place? It seems to me that
as much sponsorship as local businesses provide
for other events, they would step up and take
care of the small amounts of money actually
involved in a Christmas season parade.

But then I'm not one of the "in crowd" in Iron
County, and the way they do things I'm glad
not to be. The only reason our Christmas in
Lights parade is actually called Holiday in
Lights is because people in the community
don't step up and assert control over our
events. The community allows such things to
happen, leaving the same people in charge of
everything. Those who do stuff for the
community are at least willing to put forth
some effort.

What can be done to encourage and interest
others in taking the reins of their own
fate and interests? Can we spread this
around a bit? This is the season of giving,
the right time to think about giving back
to the community in the coming year.

Bill Vajk