Gumdrops on cupcakes and cookies with sprinkles,
Warm apple cider and bright lights that twinkle,
Brown paper packages tied up with strings,
If these are a few of your favorite things, you’ll want to be on the Clinton Square this Saturday, Nov. 11, for the 6th Annual Merry Main Street.
From 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., stores on and near the Clinton Square will be offering sugar cookies, snickerdoodles and snacks, along with cups of spiced cider or hot cocoa, to customers. Get a sticker from each participating store, and enter a drawing for $100 Downtown Dollars by 4 p.m. at the Main Street Clinton office, 116B W. Jefferson, just south of the Square on J.C. Smith Park.
Merry Main Street is the time when the merchants take down the black cats, winged bats and goblins of Halloween, and deck the stores with colored lights, evergreen boughs and paper chains, symbolizing that once again, the planet has completed another circle of the sun and our hemisphere is entering the season when the days start getting longer and the light outshines the darkness.
Shop owners also hope to get their customers in the holiday spirit, and pull their businesses out of the red.
Store owners celebrate the season by serving sweets to customers who circle the Square on Merry Main Street Saturday, collecting cookie crumbs on their coats and a sticker from each participating merchant.
Merry Main Street is the perfect time to check out new shops on the Square. The newest is The Malted Cow, at 113 W. Franklin next to Cummings Men’s Wear on the north side of the Square. The Malted Cow is an offshoot of the ice cream and shake shop in Laurie, Mo., and opened last month.
Clinton Candle Co., down the street at 135 W. Franklin, is lighting up Merry Main Street for the second year. Owner Ashlynn Newman will offer refreshments, which will probably serve something special from Ben Franklin Bistro, she said.
“We’ll have our holiday collection of scented candles out, and I’m doing a wax-melt Advent calendar, with 24 tree-shaped wax melts,” Ashlynn said. ”You open a door for each of the 24 days in December before Christmas.”
A wax-melt is a piece of scented wax that Ashlynn mixes and shapes. This year’s calendar features eight scents: juniper berry, pine, mistletoe, cranberry, apple, peppermint milkshake, snickerdoodle and roasted honey butter.
Simple Pleasures, a gift shop at 107 S. Washington, will have lots of holiday decor up. Mary Goucher said they will be serving hors d’oeuvres and drinks, plus offering a chance to win a $50 gift certificate to the store. They also have lots of gift ideas, she said, including Spoungelle bath products for men and women, and KC Chiefs logo items for football fans.
“We gift sack and we don’t charge for that,” Mary said. “You can come in and leave with your gift ready to give.”
Another hot gift idea is a Warmie, a stuffed animal that you can put in the microwave to heat. Simple Pleasure also stocks jellies, jams and Wind and Willow gourmet foods. (If Santa is reading this, I’d like a package of the pumpkin-flavored cheese ball mix.)
The Clinton Daily Democrat office and T-Shirt Factory, at 104 S. Main, will have cookies and cocoa or cider, Editor Adam Howe said. Howe, who doubles as head T-shirt wrangler, says the shop has a large selection of Kansas City Chiefs and Clinton Cardinals tees and sweatshirts, and also logo caps.
“We’ll probably do a special sale,” Howe said.
Over at Green Streets Market, 112 E. Green Street, Sherry Himes will have her garden center full of elegant holiday decor and green gift items. She’ll be serving cider and snacks.
“We have tulips, narcissus and daffodil bulbs,” said Shelby Ragan, a garden center employee. “For Merry Main Street, we put out our Christmas items.”
Green Streets has ordered poinsettias and Christmas cacti, Shelby said, but she’s not sure when the order will come in. The store is also known for shelled pecans, which are on order and hopefully will come in before Christmas, she said.
Other seasonal events in Clinton to put on your calendar:
Primitive Olde Crow and Winery’s Holiday Mart is Nov. 18 from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. The new Mercantile building on Hwy. 7 has unique gift items and both the Mercantile and main building have a clothing boutique and food items for gifts and holiday parties. Santa, the Grinch and Cindy Lou Who (too!) will be at the Holiday Mart, as well as local vendors selling unique, hand-crafted gifts, and there’ll be hot cocoa for the kids. Primitive Olde Crow is located just east of Clinton on Hwy. 7 S. at SE Hwy. Aa.
On Nov. 24, Santa arrives on the back of a fire engine at Clinton’s 18th Annual Lighted Christmas parade on the Square. The parade starts at 6 p.m. The celebration includes the Lighting of the Square, when the colored lights outlining the buildings are turned on.
For Christians, Advent, starting on Sunday, Dec. 3, marks the beginning of the church year, and is a time of anticipation and preparation. Advent continues the next three Sundays until Christmas, which this year, falls on a Monday.
Hanukkah, the Festival of Light, starts at nightfall on Dec. 7 and lasts eight days, ending Dec. 15. During Hanukkah, families exchange gifts, play games and eat potato latkes. Hanukkah means “dedication.” Lighting an additional candle on the Menorah each night commemorates the eight days the oil in the Temple lasted after the Maccabean Revolt recovered Jerusalem in the 2nd century BCE.
Kwanzaa, a celebration of African culture, starts the day after Christmas on Dec. 26 and goes through Jan.1. People decorate their houses with the red, green and black candles and the Bendara flag.
And down at the Clinton post office, the clerks remind people to get their Christmas cards in the mail by Dec. 16 to ensure delivery before the holiday. Delivery deadline for packages by USPS Ground Delivery is also Dec. 16.
Clinton Main Street was founded in 1989 and is dedicated to the economic vitality and preservation of Clinton’s historic downtown. The Clinton Square is the largest town square in the state of Missouri, with rows of historic buildings and double parking lanes around the grounds of the Henry County Courthouse. Vehicle traffic goes counter-clockwise on the street on the outside of the Square, next to the shops, with the inner lane between courthouse curb parking and the parking lanes for clockwise travel.
For more information, go to Clinton Main Street Merry Main Street Facebook.
