Winter Wonderland put some spirit in the step of shoppers

By Justin Seward - Lethbridge Herald on December 6, 2022.

Ten-month-old Amber Wainer looks up at Santa Claus during the inaugural Winter Wonderland event this weekend at Festival Square. Herald photo by Justin Seward

The Christmas spirit could be felt at Festival Square on Saturday in the form of a YQL Winter Wonderland that was hosted by ReMax YQL Professionals.

People could stroll and listen to Christmas music, have the opportunity at over $700 in prizes from community sponsors, market wares were up for purchase from Chef Stella and pictures were being taken with Santa and Mrs. Claus.

“We just decided to kind of put something together for the community,” said Regan Tennyson, an organizer.

“A lot of the downtown businesses all banded together. The support from the downtown businesses was amazing. So we’re just really excited with the turnout.”

Organizers were taking donations for the food bank.

“That was our No. 1 goal was to collect a good amount of food for the food bank,” said Tennyson.

There was 263 pounds in food donations that were raised for the Lethbridge Food Bank.

YQL Professionals were toying with the idea of adopting a family among other things and the food bank seemed to be front of mind.

“Times are hard right now and I know that the food bank is always needing donations,” said Tennyson. “So we thought what better way than to do something like this – bring the community together and help them fill their shelves.”

Organizers also wanted to bring some awareness to Festival Square.

“Which we think is a great part of the downtown core,” she said. “We just wanted to do an event of our own and there’s only so much you can do when everybody is doing Santa and doing whatever. But we just thought this is our way of giving back to the community.”

The event will look to expand into doing hay rides next year.

“We’re pretty impressed with what happened with the amount of time we had to plan,” said Tennyson. “So next year will be way bigger.”