Don’t write off Santa just yet.
The Christmas Festival on the Morristown Green is canceled this year, as announced at this week’s Morristown council meeting.
But the festival organizer said Wednesday she anticipates bringing Kris Kringle to town nevertheless, for (masked) face time with good boys and girls who maintain a safe distance.
“We’re calling it One Sleigh Away,” said Jennifer Wehring, executive director of the Morristown Partnership, the nonprofit that has hosted the month-long festival every year since 2000.
“Santa Claus is coming to town,” promised Wehring, who is finalizing details of a “modified in-person experience that will keep Santa safe, keep our team safe, and will keep the public socially distanced.”
The new location will be revealed soon, she said.
Wehring explained that the Trustees of the Green, stewards of a three-acre square steeped in Revolutionary War history, have prohibited all formal gatherings there during the pandemic.
Visitors to the Green won’t find the Santa House, or the train ride, or the rocking horse, or the caroling and other communal activities that have made prior holidays so festive.
However, Christmas lights still with bathe the park. And six-foot toy soldiers once again will stand watch, guarding the “Letters to Santa” mailbox.
(We’re told the Federal Elves-lection Commission will accept Dear Santa letters postmarked by Dec. 24, 2020.)
“The Trustees are disappointed that this beloved community celebration won’t happen this year as it has since 1913 because of CDC guidelines, but they are pleased that the holiday lights will shine,” said Alice Cutler, head of the Trustees of the Green.
“I am sure Santa will return in 2021 bigger and better than ever and we will appreciate him that much more,” Cutler said.
Santa made his first appearance on the Green in 1938 or 1940, according to various accounts. The first tree lighting ceremony was in 1913.
In a normal year, the Christmas Festival costs the Morristown Partnership more than $100,000, Wehring said. She estimates this season’s slimmed-down affair will come to around $75,000.
The festival is underwritten by corporate sponsors and revenue from other Partnership events, such as the Morristown Farmers Market, which winds down on Nov. 22.
COVID-19 has taken a bite out of that, too — several vendors bowed out in 2020 — and the Partnership had to cancel Restaurant Week and its annual fall festival. Fundraising is a bigger challenge than ever.
But Wehring, who helped raise nearly $680,000 in rent relief for struggling local businesses, is not ready to sing Blue Christmas.
The North Pole is not on New Jersey’s travel advisory list, fortunately.
“Morristown can’t go without some holiday spirit and cheer,” said Wehring, who began her Partnership career as a Christmas elf.
“It’s important to keep up these types of traditions. It’s important to adapt. We hope that what we put forth will bring a little bit of joy this holiday season.”
