Fairground light show is back again

Danielle Switalski

What started as a two person lighting experiment of sorts has turned into a full blown Christmas spectacular now called the Christmas Lighting Ceremony, which will take place Sunday November 22 at the Sanders County Fairgrounds.

The Ceremony will begin at 6 p.m. Sunday evening when the fair grounds will illuminate the night sky.  Free chili dogs and hot chocolate will be served in the pavilion until 7 p.m. and KC and the Valley Cats, a band from Lake County, are also set to perform Christmas carols during the first hour of the Ceremony.  The band performace is donated by the Sanders County Arts Council and the Sanders County Fair Foundation.

Santa Claus will make his appearance on a horse-drawn surrey, donated be Warren Wickum, between 6:45 and 7 p.m.  Santa will pass out candy canes to all of the children at his house, which is located next to the Agriculture building.  While waiting in line to visit Santa, guests will be entertained by an all-church choir singing carols.  The ceremony is set to conclude with fireworks at 7:30 p.m.  The fireworks are those leftover from the Fourth of July.

The lights will be turned on every evening following the ceremony until New Years Day.  A member of the Plains Lions Club will also be dressed as Santa Claus at the display every Friday and Saturday night starting December 4 through December 19 and will hand out candy canes donated by the Plains VFW Post.

The Lightening Ceremony began fifteen years ago when Plains locals, Mike Hashisaki and Kim McNeil, whose house is located on the fairgrounds, thought it would be a good idea to turn the fairground flagpole into a Christmas tree.

“We bought, on our own, a whole bunch of miniature lights and decided to put them up and of course it was a day where there was snow on the ground and it was about 20 degrees, and the wind was blowing about 90 miles an hour,” said Hashisaki as he laughingly rolled his eyes.

After the initial flag pole-turned-Christmas tree, the two men started adding more and more lights across the fairgrounds.  Hashisaki said they then decided to get the Sanders County Fair Foundation involved, which is now the main source of funding for the event.  The Fair Foundation earns most of its money through sponsoring people on the fairgrounds during fair and through renting out the pavilions and other things such as these.

“The Fair Foundation earns its money and we pump it back into the facility,” said Hashisaki.

Hashisaki and McNeil still decorate the fairgrounds themselves.  They began decorating in middle of September, about two weeks after the fair ended. 

“We do it at a slow pace, you can get really burned out on this,” said Hashisaki.

The event really began to grow in size about the 6th year McNeil and Hashisaki decorated the fairgrounds when a reporter from Missoula came through and did a story about the light show.  The event really began to grow after the story aired on big stations such as ABC and NBC. 

Hashisaki said they estimated around 50 cars per night last year, many of which had out-of-state license plates hailing in from Washington, Idaho and even Canada.

Hashisaki said they are also slowly trying to switch over to all LED lights, which can be left up year round and will make it easier on the two men.  LED lights are expensive, said Hashisaki, and the switch has moved slowly, but they will eventually pay for themselves and by next year all of the rope lights that are hung on every tree throughout the grounds should be LED lights that simply need to be plugged in. 

There will not be vehicular traffic allowed during the ceremony on Sunday evening, but the grounds will be open every evening after for cars to drive through the display. 

“We just ask people that come through to enjoy the lights.  They can bring a cash donation or a nonperishable food item, but we would prefer the food items as we give that all to the local food banks,” said Hashisaki.