The Becker Community Holiday Fund hosted its second annual Community Christmas Dinner at the Becker Community Center on Christmas Day, with a complete dinner provided to all attendees free of charge from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., along with the chance to visit with friends and neighbors and even an opportunity to meet Santa and Mrs. Claus.
The event is made possible by donations and volunteer time given by area businesses and residents, according to organizer Wendy Borst. The dinner was organized to provide a place for people in the community to gather together and visit and enjoy Christmas, especially if circumstances have combined to prevent them from travelling or to have others travel to spend the time with them during the Holidays. Borst also noted that the still-recovering economy can make the cost of Holiday entertaining prohibitive for many people.
Numbers of attendees for the 2014 dinner were down slightly from the previous year, Borst said, though this may have been caused in part due to the uncertainty as to the location of the event this year. The commercial banquet hall that hosted the dinner in 2013 closed recently, requiring event organizers to move quickly to find a new venue in time for Christmas.
The Becker Community Center proved to be the perfect site, since it has a kitchen facility and has hosted many dinners and breakfast functions in the past. Among the volunteers on hand at the dinner were Becker Mayor Jerome “Lefty” Kleis, Becker City Administrator Greg Pruszinske, Sherburne County Commissioner John Riebel and Nellie Simpson, along with a large crew of cooks and servers in the kitchen. BCC employees Bruno Gad and Nick Duoos also donated their Christmas afternoon to open up the facility, Borst said.
The Becker Community Holiday Fund accepts donations year-round in preparation for the annual dinner, and for other programs that help community residents in need, Borst said. Preparations are already underway to secure the BCC for the 2015 Community Christmas Dinner, as Borst said it “just makes sense to have a community dinner at the center of the community.”
Those attending the dinner certainly appeared to be having a good time, with a great deal of “table hopping” going on as people took the opportunity to spend some time visiting with each other throughout the event. Having Santa and Mrs. Claus and the ebullient Lu Schuette as greeters at the door also helped set a festive tone for the event, which was definitely “family friendly.”
