Christmas in Kutztown will light up Main Street again this year with music, crafts and food on Dec. 2.
Sponsored by the Kutztown Community Partnership, the offerings this year will add a community soup contest to on-going events such as horse-drawn wagon rides, the Community Choir, area musicians, craft vendors, photos with Santa, the Mayor’s Movie and a tree lighting.
The celebration will open on Main Street at noon and will close at 5 p.m., followed by a tree lighting and Christmas music at the Kutztown Historical Society a block off Main Street at 5:15 p.m.
Santa will be busy all day. He will start out joining Kutztown University’s mascot, Avalanche, on the university campus from 9:30 to 11 a.m. for breakfast with the children and college students. He will then board a fire truck to be transported downtown for photo ops with children at Joel Seidel Photography.
Plenty of opportunities for gift shopping will be provided by Main Street merchants, supplemented by vendors of crafts, home made jewelry and fancy foodstuffs. For more solid fare, Main Street, Kutztown sports a diversity of restaurants for a wide variety of foods including sushi, Mexican, Chinese, barbecue, pizza, deli, soup, and a micro-brewery.
The Main Street Inn, at 401 west Main Street, is sponsoring a soup contest for local cooks and will provide an eco-friendly lunch of soup, bread and a drink for $10 for adults and $5 for children. The event will take place from noon to 4 p.m. at the inn and participants will take home a vintage keepsake bowl while supplies last. All proceeds will be donated to the Kutztown University food pantry.
The Mayor’s Movie this year will be “Elf,” and will take place at the Kutztown Strand Theater at 1 p.m. The movie will be free, however, Mayor Sandy Green asks for a canned good to be donated that will help a local less privileged family have a more comfortable holiday.
Local musicians will occupy Main Street and the noted Kutztown Community Choir will offer Christmas music.
Just up the street, the Pennsylvania German Cultural Heritage Center at Kutztown University will celebrate its annual Christmas on the Farm from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Events will include traditional craft demonstrations, Pa Dutch baked treats, folk artists, children’s activities, a craft show by the Reading-Berks Guild of Craftsmen, cultural demonstrations, music and more.
For 21 and over attendees, a wine train will leave Kutztown Station all weekend at 11 a.m., 1 p.m., 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. During a leisurely ride through the countryside between Kutztown and Topton, guests will be treated to a wine tasting of the products from local wineries. The cost will be $25 per person and there will be a gift shop at the train station.
Visitors will want to bundle up for wagon rides around Kutztown provided by a local farmer and his helper.
Festivities will conclude with the lighting of the borough Christmas tree outside the Kutztown Historical Society featuring greetings from outgoing Mayor Sandy Green and incoming Mayor James Schlegel and Christmas music.
