We can start the Christmas season in Middleburg, with a hunt club review down main street, surrounded by special seasonal activities before and after, with too many featured offerings in stores to mention, and a really eclectic (quirky?) animal friendly parade. All that is terrific, yet it is only motion on the surface, lasting but a single day, unless we add a deeper purpose to our time. 

Join us as an entire community and 7,000 visitors share expressions of joy. Every parade entry is a joyful statement about something beloved in this community. Every open storefront is an expression of open arms and of welcome to one another, too. When else and where else can you celebrate the beginning of the Christmas season by sharing and co-mingling the love in our hearts with so many? 

So, on December 3rd, bring your joy and share it. Give your joy and leave it for others. Take some joy away with you and spread it around. That will begin your Christmas season, in love, leading to the peace of Christmas as well, and maybe we'll all find ourselves saying, "I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year." - Charles Dickens, Ebenezer Scrooge, A Christmas Carol.

Our Teacher said it this way, “As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; abide in My love. If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love. These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full." John 15: 9-11

What do you think?

Hooray for the new website! With Corti Designworks expertise, it is a clean, elegant, and functional tool for us all to use. Your suggestions for content are welcome, and please let me know if something doesn't seem to work. 

The 2011 Parade Day is developing nicely. We have 40 parade lineup entries at this point, a very good start indeed. We have a day filled with activities, including a new Wine Crawl. We have sponsors to thank, and there is still time for more sponsors to get involved in the integrated weekly marketing that we're doing. Swift action is needed though if you want to be included on the display posters that are put up around town for a month before parade day. 

I have to thank Reggie and Dee Dee for entrusting this to me. Christmas in Middleburg is something they both put much heart and more time into over the years. I have loved working on it over the last five years myself, and I will work to keep it as an expression of community joyfulness while organizing a positive experience for so many visitors. 

What makes Middleburg so special, and Christmas in Middleburg so heartwarming? People love the charm and beauty of the town, they love the countryside, they love the depth and legacy of our historical roots, they love the community that opens its arms to visitors, they love the spirit here that reaches out to help others within the community, and they love our eclectic and colorful sporting pastimes, including our animal-oriented family parade.

With so much being loved, isn't that the elephant in the room? People who live here feel it. People who visit here feel it from us. As we open our town and our arms to 7,000 visitors for Christmas in Middleburg, starting the holy season, we can do so in love. This puts Christ first in Christmas, beginning December 3rd, and every day through the whole year. “God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him” 1 John 4:16. 

What do you think?