Lerner Theatre brings back popular window displays and more for the holiday season

 

ELKHART, Ind -- After having to cancel the Elkhart Winter Fest in 2020, the city searched for ways to get the community involved and now in 2021, those ideas have become favorites for the holiday season.

"My favorite thing is just watching the kids walk by and they just stop and they just look up and they see these characters that they’ve read in book and then they’ve seen in movies and here they are larger than life in front of their eyes," said Director of Marketing and Senior Artis of Prem1er Arts Tanner Smale.

The windows displaying some of the best Christmas movies of all time like “How The Grinch Stole Christmas”, “A Charlie Brown Christmas” and more.

"When I first saw them, the new windows, the whole Madeline Christmas cast came up here and we got to see the windows." Elkhart students Lylah, Noah, and Ryan.

"We started last year, which was a really difficult year for everyone and we couldn’t be around each other and enjoy festivities like we normally do," said Smale.

"It was fun really fun to come down to the windows and see the things that are in them when you couldn’t do really almost anything else, because everything was shut down," said Elkhart students Lylah, Noah, and Ryan.

Now this year with events back in rotation, one particular opportunity, has become more popular for the kids since the start of the pandemic.

"Students and families struggling during the pandemic it’s been interesting to see the increase in letters to santa. I feel like maybe they’re hoping a little christmas magic might make everything feel a little bit better," said Executive Director of the Elkhart Education Foundation Ashley Molyneaux.

A little magic that caused Santa to receive more letters than usual and maybe left him wondering why so many letters?

"It really was like exponential increase in 2020. I think they were hoping Santa might end Covid. But we’re seeing lots of letters come in this year as well," said Molyneaux.

The Lerner will also bring back their Christmas plays, available to the public.

Tickets are available: Lerner Tickets