Last year, not even Scrooge could have dreaded Christmas shopping more than I did. I’d been through a season of personal growth. The kind of growth you never want because it sprouts from a well of immense loss. So, the songs of Christmas only irritated me, and the Hallmark Christmas Channel, a previous guilty pleasure, stayed off. No one needed that much holiday propaganda.
Bah. Humbug.
One Saturday in early December, I headed to downtown Fort Smith to do an interview for an upcoming article. When I finished, I drove past Immaculate Conception Catholic Church Parish Hall, where their annual Holiday Market was being held.
I wouldn’t say it was divine intervention, but something did make me turn my car around. Once I parked at the church, I had the kind of debate most introverts have when facing a new experience. Was it worth the effort? What if I had to, good heavens, talk to someone I didn’t know?
I went anyway.
This is where it gets sappy. From the moment I stepped inside the Parish Hall, I felt the spirit of Christmas. Like, the real sentimental spirit of Christmas. So much kindness, from the women who greeted me to the vendors selling things like a tabletop Santa and his reindeer with a wooden, hand-sawn sleigh. The bulk of the centerpiece was made of wine corks. Did I buy it? How could I not?
There were hand-embroidered pillowcases I couldn’t resist. Home-baked goods. Eggrolls and tamales made by local cook, Maria Diaz. Crocheted baby blankets, hand-made stuffies. Hand-crafted jewelry, candles, soaps. Rosaries and nativities. Pottery. Plus, a lunch of homemade tacos and spinach and cheese pupusas was being served. The smell was divine, but did I eat? No, I did not. You can lead an introvert to an unfamiliar lunchroom, but… Well, you know.
I remember the smiles most, the background noise of customers’ delighted voices. Laughter. Gentle reminders of the goodness of the season. And in my really hard year, it was like a magic potion.
What I didn’t know was how the Holiday Market started. This year, I was determined to find out. Here’s what I learned. In 2015, the church’s Amistad Multicultural Ladies Group proposed the idea of a market to raise money and support all the talented craftspeople and small businesses in the area. Since that time, they’ve used money made from the market to buy sound equipment, televisions for classrooms, and food and prescription medicine for those in need.
“The multicultural group meets Monday evenings, and it’s for women who work during the day,” Surennah Werley, the religious education director, says. “All year long, we look for projects. We’ve made rosaries, Advent wreaths, tote bags, crocheted items. We’ve sewn numerous quilts out of scrap fabric that we give to Hope Campus. We make baby items for Heart-to-Heart Pregnancy Center. People bring us scrap fabric, and we find a way to use it.”
Attendance at the meetings runs from fifteen women to forty. Their ages range from thirty to eighty-two. “It’s always potluck. Miss Eva, who’s eighty-two, gets wool from Germany, where she’s originally from, and knits socks. She’ll have a space at this year’s Holiday Market.
“That’s how we met her; she was a vendor. She asked us about Amistad, and we invited her. You don’t have to be Catholic to come.
“Last year was the first year we sold out of everything… Our goal is to fill the place with people and have traffic flow all day long. We want you to find gifts you’ll not find at Target, Walmart, or Amazon. That somebody right here made.
” Mr. Johnson comes every year. He’s in his eighties, and he makes wooden objects. I buy a nativity from him every year. We have another lady that makes magnetic jewelry to help with circulation. My daughter swears by the bracelets.
“We had a lady last year who had baked gluten-free items, they were delicious, and mint cupcakes that were incredible. A group of parents from Trinity [Catholic School] baked for the market and a local man with beehives sold honey.”
The Amistad ladies, many of whom are incredible cooks, serve the lunch. The cost? Only eight dollars. And Father Christmas is on hand for photos. The youngest vendor, a fifteen-year-old girl from Conway who used to live in Fort Smith, makes custom hand-beaded jewelry.
“I love the vendors,” Surennah says. “They spend the day catching up with each other. Sometimes, it’s the only time they see each other, and they’ve formed a friendship. It was about the fourth year when I knew we were on to something great because the vendors started telling other vendors about the Immaculate Conception Holiday Market.” She says the market is another way to love people, a task she takes seriously.
She came to Immaculate Conception in the 1970s at the request of a boy she liked. Surennah should have known the façade of the building well; she’d shopped in the nearby Abilities Unlimited store for school clothes often enough. But she’d never taken in its grandeur, never felt the presence she did as she sat on the back pew, where she could escape if needed. A protestant, albeit a casual one, she didn’t know if Catholicism was for her.
She taps a spot on her chest. “I felt something here,” she says, speaking of her heart. “Something I’d never felt before.” She kept both the church and the boy. She and her husband have now been married forty-five years.
Surennah carries the spirit of Christmas with her year-round. Or maybe it’s the evidence of God’s love. As for the feeling she had when she first experienced Immaculate Conception Catholic Church? It happens still, that otherworldly, unexplainable event of the heart. That’s what lets her know she’s in exactly the right place.
The Immaculate Conception Holiday Market (free to attend) will be held December 7, from 9a – 3p, in the Parish Hall (22 North 13th Street in Fort Smith). The event is free to attend.
