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Santa Comes to Rotary

 

T’was a night of joy – or at least hilarity – at the Rotary building last Thursday, December 15, for our annual Christmas party and general blowout.  We’ve had a great year – worked hard and brought a lot of service and funds back to the community – and this was the chance for Rotarians and friends to kick back and unwind.

After we’d devoured the dips and chips, Santa arrived, with a ho-ho-ho and a shaved-off beard, which he explained he had it removed during the pandemic because who wants to wear a mask AND a beard?  We enjoyed Amy’s dinner of roast beef and seafood Newburg, and thanked her for all she does all year.  Then, over dessert, it was time for our annual Ugliest Sweater Contest.  This year, the entries were particularly bad (I guess I mean good).  And “ugly” has clearly been reinterpreted as “creative,” “loud,” and just plain bizarre. Santa Bruce was the judge; he elicited audience response to help with the decision-making, and the winner was Rick Jameson – although this keen-eyed observer noted that it took a bit of bribery to seal the deal.

Next up, the “Rotations” sang a spirited rendition of “The Twelve Days of Rotary,” words penned by Tom, Linda and Monica and accompanied on the keyboard by an extremely patient Tom Churchill.  

And then the main event:  With Laurie Zimmerli once again acting as emcee, ably assisted by elf Karen Pritchard, and with indoor snowballs flying about courtesy of Debbie Graves, we began our Yankee Swap.   Popular items this year included scratch-off tickets, wine (apparently Santa believes in gambling and drinking), and, bizarrely, fleece blankets.  Least popular was a portable vacuum cleaner (I kid you not), and our intrepid MC managed to make many of the gifts seem R-rated, even if they weren’t.  (Admittedly, some were.)

At evening’s end, everyone joined in the cleanup, and several of the gifts were put safely away to repackage and reappear at next year’s Swap.  

It’s the Holiday season! Saturday December 17 is our last day of Barn sales – pickups and sales will come to a well-deserved halt until spring.  The Rotary building will be “dark” the next two Thursday evenings while we all enjoy Christmas with our families and loved ones; we will reconvene on Thursday, January 5 when our speaker will be our own Marty Helman, now serving Rotary as Trustee of The Rotary Foundation. She will tell us what that means and why she’s been on the road so much in recent months.