Pageant could be cancelled

Poor participation threatens to end What Christmas Means in Dadeville

By Laura Johnson | Dadeville Record

Published Thursday, December 24, 2009

Due to downpours, the What Christmas Means pageant received a dismally dreary reception from the community on Dec. 11,12 and 13.

In fact, it may be cancelled next year if public support doesn’t pick up, according to pageant director Karen White.

“I love doing it, I really do. It’s just when we started this about 20 years ago there were just 12 scenes and now there are 24 and it’s just too much for me,” White said. “A lot of our volunteers didn’t show up, not because they didn’t want to, but they just must have thought there was inclement weather and that we weren’t going to have it.”

White and her father, Laeman Butcher, began producing the event together 22 years ago and have already cancelled it once. Five years ago they shut down the show but brought it back after three years at the request of the community. Just two years since its return, the event is already at risk of being cancelled again.

It takes hundreds of volunteers and workmen to produce the three-night event. This year plenty of workmen were available to help set up scenes, but the volunteer actors did not make a strong showing.

It usually takes 150 actors a night to hold the pageant, but Friday they had just 100.

On Saturday storms crossed the area and the show was canceled due to the weather. Many of the scenes were knocked over from the wind, but volunteers rallied to get the show up and running the next night.

“Saturday it was very bad and there was no way we were going to hold the show in the rain,” Butcher said. “We wouldn’t have been able to do it without the volunteers.”

The wind pushed eight of the sets to the ground. It took 15 volunteers a total of 105 work hours to get the show back in running order for Sunday, but just 30 of the 150 volunteers needed were present to help produce the pageant that night.

“It takes a group of dedicated people to get the job done,” White said. “But we muddled through.”

She said that several organizations that committed volunteers to help did not come to assist or call to explain why they would not be there. White believes many of the volunteers may have mistakenly thought the show was canceled Sunday because of the light rain.

“The program isn’t for the people of Dadeville. It’s for the people of Dadeville to put on for people outside the community,” White said. “Maybe the people of Dadeville just don’t want it anymore.”

White said although the volunteers didn’t come forward like she wanted, people did step up to help financially during the planning stages. They quickly ran out of the $500 they had to produce the show and they realized they needed help, and fast.

White sent out an email asking for donations of $5 and quickly acquired $2,000.

“I sent out an SOS to the chamber of commerce and my email lit up like a Christmas tree,” White said. “They came forward like angels.”

White said if the future of the pageant depended on her and her father’s will to see it go on, it would never end, but added that it’s going to take more than just two people for it to continue. She said it’s going to take widespread public involvement.

“If the community wants it they are going to have to prove they want it and if they don’t want it we can sell it,” White said. “It could be bigger than the Montgomery zoo lights and it could be bigger than Callaway Gardens if the people of this community would just get behind it.”

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