Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: The Midcoast Tree Festival, presented by Hammond Lumber Company, starts this weekend! That is, of course, a joke for my loyal readers as I have been mentioning the Midcoast Tree Festival about every other column for two months. In my defense, it is truly one of the great events every year, and it helps the community, it helps the businesses and kicks off the holiday season for so many families.
However, it’s not the only big event coming up that is doing some true good this holiday season. In fact, there are dozens of wonderful holiday-themed events over the next six weeks, but there are four great events I want to highlight this week (besides the Midcoast Tree Festival that opens on Friday and runs all weekend — see what I did there?).
Burpees for Turkeys at Wilcox Wellness & Fitness, Nov. 23
Raise your hand if you know what the fitness term “burpee” means. For the uninitiated, it’s a fitness move where a person goes from the standing position and either steps backward into or hops down into a plank position (the push up “start” position if you will); then the person does an optional push up, and gets back to standing with a step or a hop to their feet; once on their feet they hop once in place. That entire act is one burpee — stand-plank-maybe pushup-stand-hop.
What Allison Hopkins and her two trainers do in Brunswick is essentially a burpee-a-thon where people donate $5 per burpee, and the money goes to the United Way of Mid Coast Maine specifically to fight against food insecurity. This is a program Allison has run for several years in conjunction with Wilcox Wellness & Fitness’ original branch in Bangor. The event is streamed between the two locations and the trainers in Bangor compete against the trainers in Brunswick to see who can raise the most money (by doing the most burpees). Last year, the Brunswick trainers did well over 400 burpees a piece with an audience of 50-60 people cheering them on. That raised thousands of dollars to buy food for families in this area.
To find out more about Burpees for Turkeys, you can certainly find Wilcox Wellness & Fitness on Facebook, check out wilcoxwellnessfitness.com or swing by their location at 275 Bath Road in Brunswick at 11 a.m. this Saturday to cheer them on. If you do, you will see the author of this column, taking time away from the Midcoast Tree Festival, to emcee this event … in a turkey costume.
Santa Day, Nov. 30
Santa Claus will be very busy the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Onn Nov. 30, both the Brunswick Downtown Association and Main Street Bath will be welcoming him to town. It all starts at 3 p.m. with hot cocoa, cookies and horse-drawn wagon rides, with Santa and friends arriving by fire truck at 3:15 p.m. to make their way to the Gazebo on the downtown Brunswick Mall to meet kids and families. The Brunswick Downtown Association event also includes performances by Una Voce Chamber Choir around 3:45 p.m. and Brunswick High School Chorus around 4:45 p.m.. The event concludes with the tree lighting at 5:30 p.m. Visit brunswickdowntown.org for more information.
Magically, Santa and Mrs. Claus will be arriving in Bath at Library Park at 4 p.m., also with cocoa and cookies on hand. The Main Street Bath event features a carol singalong with the Nor’easters Barbershop Chorus, family photos with Santa and Mrs. Claus, dog celebrity “Bear” on hand (a local Bernese Mountain Dog) and families will be able to interact with Woodland Wonderland characters. This tree lighting kicks off the annual Old Fashioned Christmas in Bath 2024, and the theme this year is Woodland Wonderland. In fact, the downtown scavenger hunt to find the eight squirrel figures starts that day. Find all the details at visitbath.com.
If you happen to miss the big guy that Saturday, Santa will be at the Midcoast Tree Festival on Sunday, Dec. 1, to greet children and families, too.
Harpswell Heating Assistance Dinner and Silent Auction, Dec. 7
This is another truly overwhelming example, like Burpees for Turkeys, of community helping community. For several years now, Jen and Nick Charboneau have hosted this event at their restaurant, Cook’s Lobster & Ale House, to raise money for the town fund to help with heating assistance. Numerous businesses donate items and even more people come out to participate and bid on the items that will make great gifts for their friends and family. The event is from 4-8 p.m. on Dec. 7.
I’ve been told that this fundraiser, for each of the last two years, has funded every heating assistance request the Town of Harpswell received those winters. Read that again — pretty incredible, right? Neighbors donating items and bidding on items to raise funds so their neighbors can keep their heat on; it’s absolutely what the season is about. Save the date, but follow the Cook’s Lobster & Ale House Facebook page (they have an event on there) for more details.
Finally, if you have an event this holiday season that you would like to promote, please submit it to our Bath-Brunswick Regional Chamber community calendar. We have a fresh, modern website that we released in August, but at the same web address as always: midcoastmaine.com. That site has a community calendar with a simple submission form.
Much of the content I get for upcoming events that you read in these columns comes from that community calendar. Our site also has great information on the chamber and the region. If you’re looking for business listings, current local business updates or just want to find out more about the events like the Midcoast Tree Festival that opens this Friday at St. John’s Community Center in Brunswick, you can find that information on our website.
Seriously, though, it is a great local information source that we encourage you to check out.
Cory King is executive director of the Bath-Brunswick Regional Chamber of Commerce.