About six months ago, I wrote about the onset of summer in the County, also known as Tourist Season. It was chock full of gallery openings, book launches, theatre and film, classical and jazz festivals, chamber concerts, art auctions, lectures, studio tours, even a runway show. 

It wasn’t just tourist season, I noted. It was art season. 

Now, we are deep into what we call the “off season.” Late fall, heading into winter. 

There’s just one problem.

It’s as busy now as it was in June and July. 

When summer comes to an end with the County Adaptation Film Festival on the last weekend of September, it’s suddenly October. But that just means the first in a positive procession of parades is upon us. The year’s giant pumpkin harvest, the pride of Wellington, ushers in the end of the harvest season and the long run to Christmas.

But not so fast. October also means Fall Countylicious.

Countylicious is, so they say, for the locals. The visitors are all supposed to be gone. But I don’t know about that. There is no better time than in the height of the County’s spectacular fall — the riot of colour, the tumult of the lake, the mellow weather, the harvest, all are at their peak just around Thanksgiving. That  long weekend is one of the busiest on the calendar for hotels and vacation homes. It closes the long arc of a season that starts at Easter.

It’s only after Thanksgiving that Tourist Season finally, as all things must, even here, comes to an end. 

But nothing really comes to an end here.

As the days start to shorten, the skies to darken, that just means the Firelight Lantern Festival is upon us, greeting the deepening darkness with a parade of light. 

Wassail follows fast on the riches of Countylicious in November. In a good year, the festivities can still take place outdoors. Wassail involves cideries and wineries in a well sodden celebration of the burying of the vines at the close of the year. 

But if mid-November also sees the last of the farmers’ markets — Picton’s in the Crystal Palace, launched with a Stone Soup Harvest Dinner the night before — the very same weekend marks the onset of Christmas: the Picton Night Market and the Closson Road Christmas Crawl launch the season of giving.

We don’t just do any kind of shopping here. We do a full-on festive retail experience. Alongside the Night Market and the Christmas Crawl, there were the Holly Jolly Christmas Market, County Arts’ the Makers Hand, and the Department of Illumination’s 10 x 10 Art Show. 

This coming weekend, on Saturday 29 November, Wellington’s shops and makers offer a strolling market of gifts, food, hot chocolate, and small-town charm. The Red Barn at the Eddie is transformed into a vast Christmas Market. Base31 launches a vintage market in the Commissary, and the annual Tyendinaga Christmas Craft Sale is on at the Mohawk Community Centre. 

The weekend after this one sees the very new, Very Milford Christmas Tour, and the return of the Christmas in the County House Tour, whose proud homeowners welcome us all in to revel in County history, with proceeds to the Built Heritage Fund.

The Christmas Parades, one each for Bloomfield, Wellington, and Picton, now follow each other in rapid succession. Emmanuel Baptist Church offers a living re-enactment of the birth of Christ, complete with hay rides. And there’s music, of course. Biglake brings The Children’s Choir to perform Let it Snow, The Andrew presents celtic music by Seventh Town, while Brian Barlow’s Big Band brings Ellington’s Nutcracker and A Charlie Brown Christmas to The Regent. 

But also around the beginning of December, all the festivity, frivolity, and fun take a different turn. Christmas in the County ushers in the time for building and sustaining the wider community. GivingTuesday is a global movement of local action, driven by generosity and people who care, and transforming communities — all around the world. It’s a big subject in the paper this week: on the next page you’ll find an Op Ed from Prince Edward Learning Centre, a champion of giving all year round, about its transformative power. The County Foundation, whose mission is giving, notes the occasion in its regular banner, this week on page 8, and the Prince Edward County Memorial Hospital Foundation offers a personal reflection from Judy Plomer on page 13.

GivingTuesday, this year on 2 December, marks the advent of a season whose annual cycle of charitable events is as predictable and reassuring as it is welcome. This weekend’s Festival of Trees at Isaiah Tubbs and the Second Time Around Store’s annual Christmas Boutique, both events by Prince Edward Memorial Hospital Auxillary, send all proceeds to the new hospital build. 

The PEC Angel Tree comes next. Volunteers are already busy collecting winter clothing for children, and offering us all a chance to donate, to volunteer, and to help families in need. The Cherry Valley Women’s Institute presented Angel Tree with a cheque for $1000 earlier this month. 

Home base for Angel Tree is Picton’ St. Mary Magdalene; this is the time of the year when the churches re-assert their traditional role with services, choirs, and outreach that affirms the value of each and every one of us. 

It is only after this loveliest of seasons, of giving and of gratitude, that even this lively County must finally head into winter. The deep freeze of January, February, and March may be the real, if only, “off season.” 

But I’m going to wait and see. 

Karen Valihora