Around Town
‘It’s All about Our Town’: New Canaan Community Foundation Helps Save Christmas
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For many New Canaanites, the high Christmas season launches with the Holiday Stroll and first Sunday of December, when firefighters deck the fire house, and runs through Christmas Eve caroling at God’s Acre and Dec. 25 church services and family dinners. Two important pieces of favorite local Christmas traditions emanate from Kiwanis Park, where the Exchange Club for some 40 years has sold wreaths and trees alongside Santa’s Workshop, where local kids meet the big man on weekends. So when it was discovered suddenly two weeks ago that the fuel oil tank which heats Santa’s Workshop (at the New Canaan Girl Scouts Merrie Bee Cabin) had deteriorated irreparably, raising the prospect of a Workshop-less holiday for scores of locals, it represented a problem not just for the Exchange Club and Girl Scouts, but the community at large. Enter the New Canaan Community Foundation, which immediately issued a $2,600 emergency or “out of cycle” grant to cover most of the cost of a replacement tank.