Hometown holiday

Hometown Holiday was started in 2019 by the Glidden Area Development Corporation as a way to encourage and assist our community to decorate for the holiday season. We chose the Saturday after Thanksgiving as it is “Small Business Saturday” and a great time to move into the Christmas season. To encourage patronage of our local businesses, we created a “Santa Run Raffle,” where individuals go to participating locations and receive stamps that can be later redeemed for raffle tickets. We also added craft vendors at some of these business locations to get them exposure as well. We then decided to add music in the streets, some other raffles, kid’s craft area, and a small parade to fulfill the day.

Hometown Holiday originated as a one time event, but after a lot of positive feedback (even through a strong snowstorm) we decided to look at it as a yearly event. In 2020, Covid prevented us from hosting the event. In 2021, we were able to resume the event and added a few new wrinkles like a light show and free family photos. In 2022, we again made a few minor changes, one is that we added free horse-drawn wagon rides. In 2023, we put extra emphasis on our vendors/crafters. We added the school as a new location to include more vendors and designed a raffle that is aimed to increase their sales. In 2024, we added some new Santa Run stops, increased our vendor area at the school, and added more raffles to enjoy. 

Now in 2025, we have moved our headquarters to the Glidden School Campus and have adjusted our hours to start and end sooner. We have condensed our Santa Run to in town locations to prevent unnecessary travel in case of bad weather. We have also added meat raffles at the locations out of town that were previously in the Santa Run.

In a nutshell, the Hometown Holiday is about supporting our local small businesses first and foremost, both brick and mortar businesses and home-based crafters. All raffles, music, parades, and other events are there to help fulfill the day.