BETHEL – Strong community support and good weather were credited for pulling off the best New Year’s Bethel event Wednesday evening.

A late night snowstorm was icing on the cake of a magical evening, said co-organizer Al Cressy.

“Unlike the last event, the weather this year was not a problem,” he said Friday. “It started to snow at 11:30 p.m., but that added a real nice touch to things. The whole thing came off well, because the community supported it.”

Cressy said 500 people – about half from Bethel – attended the sixth annual event’s five entertainment venues, taking in a first-ever celestial Chinese Dragon children’s parade and craft jamboree, horse and wagon rides, marshmallow roasting, and fireworks.

“I thought the highlight of the evening was the State Street Traditional Jazz Band performances. They were fantastic, and the other performances were wonderful as well,” he said.

Besides the band, which played New Orleans jazz, other performers were Trickster Fox, a juggling, comic artist; Leland Faulkner, a visual theater illusionist; Maine humorist John McDonald; and The Old Grey Goose, a band that played old-time country dance music.

Co-organizer Stan Howe said the jazz band’s 23-year-old trumpet player was “just extraordinary.”

Both Cressy and Howe said the new children’s dragon parade and jamboree went so well that they’ll become regular fixtures in years to come.

“We had a lot more children than ever before, and they even went to the entertainment events with their parents,” Howe said.

“Those family events added a wonderful new element to the program. From what I’ve heard, there were 60 to 70 kids involved in the children’s dragon parade. They gathered from 6 to 6:15 p.m., and once they got under the sheets, they were rarin’ to go,” Cressy said.

The parade consisted of a huge paper mache dragon head and 50 feet of colorfully decorated body fabric supported by the children, some of whom were given maracas and drums so they could make noise, said co-organizer Kate Goldberg.

“The dragon was awesome,” Goldberg said. “The dragon could have been a lot longer. We could have doubled it. But I think the kids all really had a great time, because it was so much fun.”

The celestial Chinese dragon, a mythical creature that symbolizes ultimate prosperity and good fortune, danced around the town common and provided the flame to light the traditional New Year’s bonfire.

Underneath the dragon body, children carried little glow sticks. Someone else carried a lit candle that symbolized dragon fire.

But at next year’s event, Goldberg said, organizers may craft a dragon head that breathes fire. They might even attempt to shoot for a world record in creating the longest, dancing Chinese dragon.

“I did a Web search, and there are records for several other dragons out there,” Goldberg added.

Goldberg, Cressy and Howe said the streets were packed with people of all ages.

“You could see the intensity building the day before it happened with pre-event ticket sales. I couldn’t even keep up with the demand of printing tickets to get them out to the outlets,” Cressy said.

In past New Year’s Bethel events, Goldberg said there were only a few people on the street when the bonfire was lit.

“But there was a whole gaggle of people there Wednesday night,” she added.

Becky and Dwayne Durgin of Meadow Creek Farm in Sumner provided horse-drawn wagon rides around the common from 7 to 10 p.m. Becky Durgin said there were so many people who wanted a ride that they couldn’t even begin to keep up with them.

“We were wicked busy, but it was a good crowd,” she said.

Things even went so smoothly that Howe and Cressy both got to watch some of the entertainment for a change.

“It made me proud to be a member of this community, because it was such a wonderful affair,” Cressy added.

tkarkos@sunjournal.com

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