In Focus: 1st Festival Of Wreaths Brings Christmas To Bemidji

Christmas has come to Bemidji! If you couldn’t tell by the lights, the music and the snow, the Headwaters School of Music and Arts also has 18 new special decorations on display.

“This Festival of Wreaths is something we wanted to give to the city of Bemidji as another part of the wonderful holiday opportunities in town,” says Ken Cobb, who serves as the board chair for the Bemidji Area Sertoma Club.

The Bemidji Festival of Wreaths is a joint fundraiser between Headwaters and Bemidji Area Sertoma Club. The wreaths will be auctioned off, then that money will go to support arts scholarships for kids and speech and hearing needs in the Bemidji community. All of the wreaths were created by local businesses.

“We’ve been planning this for probably about a year and we wanted to do something where businesses could have a chance to get involved. Some of them are really unique, and some of the wreaths were really decorated as an expression to the business, and we just hope people enjoy looking at them,” says Cobb.

You can see by the wreaths that the businesses got creative. They aren’t made with just your typical tulle bows.

“We have BSU tickets. We’re giving away BSU tickets on one of the wreaths that were donated by Thrivent Financial. We have another wreath with a Christmas DVD on it that you can actually watch. We also have the Headwaters School who did a really nice wreath with pencils and school type supplies on it. Raphael’s is kind of a really cool wreath. It really highlights and it lights up which we feature that one. Then, of course, we’ve got the collectors item in the making: the Coca-Cola one wreath,” says Cobb.

The wreaths were open to the community for tonight only, but there is still one more chance to see them in person. There will be a silent auction and concert next Saturday, December 2nd at the Headwaters School. It starts at 6:30 in the afternoon and ends at 8.

“You can take part in the concert and the silent auction, and then we’ll be live auctioning off one of the wreaths,” says Cobb.

If you don’t get a chance to bid on a wreath this year, an organizer says there’s a good possibility the festival will be making a comeback.

“There’s a lot of different towns that do a festival of wreaths or a festival of trees. We decided to start with wreaths. Maybe we’ll do trees in the future, but right now we’re doing wreaths,” says Cobb.