Food, housing costs & utilities bills are the big concerns
Karen Moynihan is the Vice President of Philanthropy, Catholic Charities New Hampshire, which provides a variety of services including food distribution through the New Hampshire Food Bank. See cc-nh.org.
What have you noticed about the community’s needs right now and over the last year?
We have more people coming to us looking for assistance than we have in the past — even more so than when the pandemic first hit in 2020 and continued into 2021. So people are struggling, and the primary reason is threefold: the cost of food has increased, utility costs in New Hampshire are some of the highest in the country, and the cost of housing. So people are having a hard time maintaining their monthly budgets when everything around them just keeps going up and up. We have more people coming to us for emergency assistance and really urgent needs. They’re really one paycheck away from disaster.
What items can people give?
There are two programs that can take donated items: We have a veterans program here in Manchester, Liberty House, and they have a pantry that provides food and clothing and gear. A lot of our veteran population in Manchester is homeless. So they need camping gear and warm clothing and things like that. They list on their website what their needs are for the pantry; those could change on any given day. The other program we have is out at the Seacoast, and it’s a transitional housing program for moms and children called New Generation. These moms and children are usually homeless, they don’t have a job, and they’ve experienced trauma of some sort. Many of them have left abusive relationships. They may come in with some addiction challenges. They may come in without a driver’s license or crucial documentation because they had to leave a situation quickly. The program works with these moms for about a year getting them back on their feet. … By the time they leave the program, they have a job, they have child care, and they have an affordable place to stay. Anyway, there is a thrift store on site that takes donations of all kinds, because when those women leave that program, they also need household items. So folks can donate household items or clothing to the thrift store. They need everything from children’s clothing to adult clothing to bedding to kitchen items, things like that. So that’s another wonderful way to donate either gently used or new items.
What can monetary gifts be used for?
Monetary donations allow us the flexibility to quickly deploy resources for the most urgent needs. Oftentimes we can keep people in their homes by helping them get caught up on a utility bill, or helping them with a car repair that they can’t afford because they’re going to be evicted if they don’t pay their rent. There are just so many enormous challenges that people are facing right now, and they are literally on the verge of losing the most important things — housing, food, medications.
Where are volunteers needed most?
We have one program here in Manchester that is in urgent need of volunteers. It’s called Caregivers and this is a program for seniors on low fixed incomes who are just slightly above the poverty level. These seniors no longer drive and they need help to be able to continue to live independently in their homes. There are two things that Caregivers does for this network of seniors: they do deliveries of food to them — every senior gets a delivery of food once a month — and we give them rides to doctor’s appointments or the grocery store, whatever their needs are. These volunteers are sometimes the only connection to the outside world that these seniors have. They often don’t have family or relatives nearby to help them, so this is a critical resource for them.
How can people find the right volunteering opportunity?
Visit the Catholic Charities website click on the “Get involved” button. This section lists various volunteer opportunities. Choose what inspires you the most. You can sign up or learn more about each opportunity directly through the website. If you have any questions or need guidance, you can always call our office and speak with our volunteer coordinator.
How to help
Here are some of New Hampshire homelessness and housing support charities.
Cross Roads House 600 Lafayette Road, Portsmouth, 436-2218, crossroadshouse.org
Families in Transition 122 Market St., Manchester, 641-9441, fitnh.org
Family Promise of Greater Concord 79 Clinton St., Concord, 856-8490, familypromisegcnh.org.
Family Promise of Southern New Hampshire 3 Crown St., Building B, Nashua, 883-7338, familypromisesnh.org
Friends Program 130 Pembroke Road, Suite 200, Concord, 228-1193
Liberty House 221 Orange St., Manchester, 669-0761, libertyhousenh.org
New Generation 568 Portsmouth Ave., Greenland, 436-4989, newgennh.org
New Horizons Shelter 199 Manchester St., Manchester, 668-1877, newhorizonsnh.org
Harbor Care 77 Northeastern Blvd., Nashua, 882-3616, harborcarenh.org
Marguerite’s Place 87 Palm St., Nashua, 598-1582, margueritesplace.org
McKenna House 100 S. Fruit St., Concord, 225-8610
My Friend’s Place 368 Washington St., Dover, 749-3017
The Way Home 214 Spruce St., Manchester, 627-3491
Featured photo: Liberty House in Manchester, a program of Catholic Charities. Courtesy photo.
While it was being built, Drew Dunn would drive by the Nashua Center for the Arts and think about performing there one day. On Dec. 2, the 2010 Nashua High School South graduate will headline, the latest milestone in a comedy career that was quick out of the gate when it started 10 years ago and continues to rise.
“Nashua is my hometown,” Dunn said by phone recently. “I’ve lived in a lot of places, but it’s cool to be able to do this.”
Dunn’s easy-going demeanor and razor-sharp instincts combine with innate humor for a comedic style loved by both fans and fellow comics. The latest example of the latter is Dane Cook, who saw Dunn open for him in West Hollywood a few months back and was impressed enough to invite him on tour.
Connecting with the Boston comic was, Dunn said, “kind of super random.” Cook streams video games on Twitch, and Dunn’s dad follows him on the popular website. When Drew posted about the show on his social media, Dad messaged Cook. “He told him we’ve been big fans for a long time, we’re both from the New England area…. That got Dane to watch a few minutes of my set.”
The comic’s career has seen a steady checklist of successes. Playing the Johnny Carson Great American Comedy Festival in Carson’s hometown of Norfolk, Nebraska, was an early triumph, “the first time I got on a plane and did standup.” Dunn won the Boston Comedy Festival in 2017; later he went to the Pacific Northwest, where he lived in grade school, and took top honors at the month-long Seattle International Comedy Competition.
The biggest highlight since then has been hitting the road with Cook, which will continue next year. It included a stop at the Wilbur Theatre, which Dunn called “one of the last major venues in Boston on my checklist.” Overall, the tour is “the first taste of the next level of this business that I’ve had, and it’s inspiring. It makes it feel a little bit more attainable.”
Such glamorous highs are the result of an arduous journey.
“I’ve done everything from campground shows talking to people sitting in their golf carts in the middle of the day, to random breweries and stuff like that,” he said. Throughout, “I’ve learned comedy is a marathon…. Hard work adds up over time to be able to create moments like [the Nashua show], which makes it worthwhile. Building something and then sharing it, continuing to go from there, it’s a never-ending road, this whole standup game. I’m just happy to be on it.”
Dunn acknowledged other comics who helped him along the way, including early mentor Corey Rodrigues. “He always seemed a step or two ahead of me, so any time I’d be running into something new, he’d be a guy I’d hit up.”
Manchester comic Paul Landwehr, who’ll open in Nashua, is another. Dunn recalled working the door with him at Dick Doherty’s Comedy Den in Boston when both were starting out.
Amiability is key to Dunn’s success. “My business model when it comes to this whole thing is to just be funny and nice to everybody, because it’s more fun that way. So many comics get in this competitive mindset of trying to one-up each other — ‘Why is he getting an opportunity and not me?’ or ‘Why is she winning and not me?’ For me it’s always been us comics versus the crowd. If more people are seeing standup comedy, that’s a win for all of us.”
Dunn sees a rising tide in the regional scene.
“I think comedy in general, and particularly in Boston, is probably in a better state than it’s ever been,” he said. “I wasn’t alive in the ’80s and that boom, but comedy in general now, there’s more people watching and listening and going to live shows as far as standup goes than ever before in the history of time. To be a part of that … is just infinitely exciting.”
Drew Dunn w/ Paul Landwehr and Will Mars When: Saturday, Dec. 2, 8 p.m. Where: Nashua Center for the Arts, 201 Main St., Nashua Tickets: $29 at etix.com
A girl wishes upon a star and the star comes down to hang out in Wish, an underbaked mush of a fairy tale about the eternal struggle between security and liberty that also has the feel of a half-hearted Disney IP origin story.
Asha (voice of Ariana DeBose) is a 17-year-old living back in the once upon a time on the Mediterranean-y island of Rosas, which is ruled by King Magnifico (voice of Chris Pine), who founded the city-state years earlier with his wife Queen Amaya (Angelique Cabral). King Magnifico is a good sorcerer and he designed Rosas as a land where people of all backgrounds could come and live together in peace and safety under his rule — so right away you know he’s a villain. But this would be a real short movie if everyone else realized it, so the people of Rosas just think of him as a benevolent ruler who grants wishes. Every citizen gives Magnifico their wishes when they turn 18 — wishes being represented by a sort of glowy bubble — and he keeps them safe. Regularly, he picks one citizen to have their wish come true, which he accomplishes with his magic. In the meantime, the adult populace is not burdened by these wishes, the content of which they forget.
Asha is interviewing to be his apprentice and help him with his magic-ing. Perhaps she’s a little hopeful that doing this will help her 100-year-old grandfather Sabino (voice of Victor Garber) and her mother Sakina (voice of Natasha Rothwell) get their wishes granted. But when she sees her grandfather’s wish bubble floating around Magnifico’s wish bubble arboretum and asks Magnifico to grant it, he basically says “no job for you” explaining that her grandfather’s vague desire to create something that inspires future generations could lead to revolution or violence.
A dejected Asha later sings a song about wanting more for her people than All Of This and poof, a star appears. The star is a cute little blob of a thing that squeaks around and sprinkles glitter dust, giving animals, like Asha’s pet goat Valentino (voice of Alan Tudyk), the ability to talk and sing another song about how we are all made of star dust. Asha becomes determined to retrieve her family’s wishes — and eventually everybody’s wishes — so people can have the chance to make them come true on their own. As Asha’s friends observe of their 18-year-old buddy Simon (voice of Evan Peters), giving up their wish makes people a little less themselves, less whole.
Meanwhile, the magical light show caused when the star came to Earth has Magnifico worried that someone else is using magic and challenging his rule. He can’t figure out what’s going on with his own good-guy magic so he turns to a book of dark magic and also asking people to fink on each other to try to find this Threat to Rosas. He goes from being a basically benign dictator who is maybe a little too impressed with his own handsomeness to being a megalomaniac who won’t tolerate any dissent because one teen girl asked him a question.
Also, Asha maybe invents animation using the tiny-drawing-on-a-page-corner flipbook method?
We get a lot of information about the Wish — how it makes people feel to give it to Magnifico, how he cares for them, what he does with them when he gets his dark magic, why he is such a helicopter mom about people’s hopes and dreams. There is a general “Magnifico lost his birth family in a land riven with strife,” which is what pushed him to make a cheery dystopia. But there is a sense of “oh and also this” when it comes to story elements rather than a clear, streamlined story with clear motivations for Magnifico. Similarly, the movie is filled with general Disney Easter Eggs that often play as in-jokes and almost appear to maybe sort of build up to something — “and that’s how A became B” — but also don’t really. All the nods to Peter Pan and Bambi etc. (and all the visuals that feel like “remember that cottage from Sleeping Beauty? This isn’t that but hey made you think of it didn’t we?”) feel more like a fast food “100 years of Disney” promotional meal package than a real story. There’s a world in which Disney just creates a montage of discussion of wishes and dreams with clips from its movie library and achieves the same thing (that thing I think being the centrality of wishes and dreams to Disney stories) with more genuine emotion and brevity.
Wish feels like a movie that had some general ideas of what it wanted to do and where it wanted to go but had no clear idea how to get there and so it just filled in the gaps with “default Disney story” stuff. Likewise, the music feels very much like someone shoved Frozen and Moana into a food processor and this is the texture-less paste that came out. The songs here read as extremely first-drafty and forgettable.
All that said, my kids and other kids in a very full theater seemed to be mostly hanging in with this movie — perking up the most when Valentino the goat was in on the action (the line, which also appears in the trailers, that involves him saying he found a secret door with his butt got a big laugh). The talking animals do provide some nice moments of weirdness and I wish (ha) the movie had gone more in on that kind of goofiness than on creating something that feels more like a commemorative coin than a lively new story. C+
Rated PG for thematic elements and mild action, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Chris Buck and Fawn Veerasunthorn with a screenplay by Jennifer Lee & Allison Moore, Wish is an hour and 35 minutes long and distributed in theaters by Walt Disney Studios.
Trolls Band Together
Poppy, Branch and the crew reunite for a caper winding them through the music of pop boy bands of the last 30+ years in Trolls Band Together, a perfectly cromulent hour and a half of kid entertainment.
Poppy (voice of Anna Kendrick), queen of the Trolls, and Branch (voice of Justin Timberlake), her frequently grumpy boyfriend, prepare for the marriage of Poppy’s good friend Bridget (voice of Zooey Deschanel) and Gristle (voice of Christopher Mintz-Plasse). Bridget and Gristle are both Bergens, who are larger and more monstery than Trolls and used to eat Trolls but now everybody parties together. As Bridget and Gristle say their I-dos, the ceremony is interrupted by John Dory (voice of Eric Andre), Branch’s long-estranged brother. Branch and his four brothers were once members of the boy band BroZone together but broke up after a concert went wrong when they tried to achieve the perfect family harmony. John Dory wants the group back together to give perfection another try as he thinks it will be the only thing that can break the diamond bottle their brother Floyd (voice of Troye Sivan) is being held in. Floyd was trollnapped by Velvet (voice of Amy Schumer) and Veneer (voice of Andrew Rannells), a brother-sister pop duo of plasticy-looking creatures. They are personally talentless but have devised a way of draining Floyd of his talent to make them seem like the superstar vocalists they pretended to be.
As Floyd was Branch’s kindest brother, he decides to join John Dory on his quest, eventually scooping up other brothers Spruce (Daveed Diggs), who now calls himself Bruce and runs a resort with his wife and many children, and Clay (voice of Kid Cudi) to rescue Floyd. Along the way, the gang comes across an old Bergen putt-putt course that is now home to a band of Trolls left behind in Bergen Town all those years ago when Poppy and her father, then-King Peppy (voice of Walt Dohrn), escaped. As has already been spoiled in some of the trailers, one of those Trolls is a fast-talking, quick-hair-braiding, high-energy Troll named Viva (voice of Camila Cabello), Poppy’s long-lost sister. Viva is excited to see Poppy again but does not know about or believe the news that Trolls and Bergens are now friends.
As with other entries in this jukebox sugarfest series, Trolls Band Together pastes together bits of boy band song elements — reaching back to Boyz II Men and New Kids on the Block as well as Timberlake’s own NSYNC, which delivers a new original song for this movie and all the moms seeing it who remember a boy band fandom of their youth. It’s cute, as the music always is in these movies, though this one doesn’t feel quite as tune-packed as previous entries. This movie also feels less about Poppy than previous entries, which focused on Poppy’s leadership or Poppy’s friendship with Branch. Here, she feels more along for the ride.
And that’s all fine. These movies aren’t Pixar-in-its-prime levels of story-telling and visual delight. But they are fast-moving, upbeat, silly and occasionally weird in a way that provides a nice little tart element to all this cotton candy. They are kid-friendly without being actively adult off-putting. B-
Rated PG for some mild rude and suggestive humor, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Walt Dohrn and Tim Heitz with a screenplay by Elizabeth Tippet, Trolls Band Together is an hour and 31 minutes long and distributed in theaters by Universal Studios.
Amherst market riffs on the European market tradition
Last year Lindsay Buchanan, with the help of a committee of volunteers, put together a German-inspired Christmas market at the Amherst Village Green. This year the Amherst German Christmas Market will be on Saturday, Dec. 9, from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.
“The point was to create a Christmas event for my community that would appeal to all ages,” said Buchanan, who was raised in Amherst. “Amherst puts on a really great Fourth of July and Halloween, and I just felt that we could use something for Christmastime.”
With a love for traveling and experiencing other cultures, she landed on the German Christmas market theme. The original German Christmas markets, she said, started during the Middle Ages when people in Germany would go out to buy supplies for the winter. Buchanan stayed true to the outdoor setting and incorporated other European aspects with German goods sold by vendors.
“Our committee works very hard donating their time and we still have a long way to go before we reach our vision,” Buchanan said. “Every year we learn more and make adjustments. … We plan to add more authenticity as the event evolves.”
While shopping is the focus of this event (Buchanan stresses it is not specifically a food event), those looking for some German eats find offerings including German classics such as brats and sauerkraut, potato latkes, currywurst (fried sausage with a sauce with curry powder on top), glüwein (a spiced German wine), lebkuchen (a German gingerbread), and much more.
There will also be a biergarten, live music including German tunes, popular music and Christmas classics, and an appearance from Santa Claus.
Find other food vendors listed on the event’s website, amherstchristmasmarket.org.
Other market items include New England-made crafts and German decor and imports such as star lanterns and nutcrackers. Some of the most popular items include candle bridges, ornaments and smokers.
“Last year we received 8,000 to 10,000 attendees and we designed the event with the expectation we would receive about a third of that, so it was shocking and bewildering to see these really big crowds,” Buchanan said. “A lot of people [reported] they drove in from out of state, so it was much bigger than we could have ever anticipated. … We’re trying to make adjustments with the anticipation of a big crowd again.”
While the word “German” is attached to the title of the event, Buchanan highlights that this event is an American-European hybrid event that is not a recreation of major city markets in Germany, but is simply German-inspired, and that the Amherst German Christmas Market is an entirely volunteer-run nonprofit.
“It’s just so great that so many people want to see this event succeed and are helping to make it happen,” Buchanan said. “To go from just an idea to this huge thing, it’s hard for me to even comprehend. … We appreciate people’s patience and support. … The whole point is to have a good time.”
Amherst German Christmas Market Where: Amherst Village Green, 2 Main St., Amherst When: Saturday, Dec. 9, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Featured photo: Amherst German Christmas Market walkway. Photo by Lindsay Buchanan.
We all know Thanksgiving for the turkey and pie and giving thanks, but what is at the real root of the holiday and how does that tie in with Native American heritage month and culture? This is the question four individuals face when trying to write an accurate and politically correct Thanksgiving play for elementary school children in The Thanksgiving Play by Larissa FastHorse. Theatre Kapow’s production of the play will be at the Bank of New Hampshire Stage in Concord from Friday, Dec. 1, through Sunday, Dec. 3.
“It’s a group of four people who come together to write and produce a play in honor of Native American Heritage Month and they realize very quickly that it’s difficult for them to tell a story about Native American heritage without having any Native Americans among their company,” said director Matt Cahoon. “The whole play is them trying to struggle with the fact that they don’t know what to do. They get very paralyzed by their own ‘wokeness’ for lack of a better word, and they [are] trying to do the right thing, and the right thing ultimately ends them up in several not right places.”
The four-person cast features longtime Theatre Kapow member Rachael Longo as high school teacher Logan, her onstage partner Jaxton played by Peter Josephson, Molly Litt as Alicia, and Joel Iwaskiewicz making his Theatre Kapow debut as Caden.
“I think one of the biggest challenges that we have is being OK with saying and doing some of the really awful and inappropriate things that they do,” Longo said. “We perform these school pageants that have actually … been written and used by different public schools in our country, and so the playwright took the text from the actual pageants and put it in for the actors to perform.”
Native American playwright Larissa FastHorse wrote the comedy in 2015. It is the only one of her plays to go to Broadway, which Cahoon says is likely due to its relatability.
“I think people [will] very quickly recognize themselves in some of these characters,” he said. “This kind of innate need to do the right thing, to be politically correct, to take care of each other and sometimes the ways in which we can tie ourselves in knots in an effort to do good. There’s a lot of comedy that comes out of that idea, that difficult conversations are difficult for a reason, and I think we get to laugh at these characters as they try to navigate [that].”
Theatre Kapow presents The Thanksgiving Play Where: Bank of New Hampshire Stage, 16 S. Main St., Concord When: Friday, Dec. 1, at 7:30 p.m.; Saturday, Dec. 2, at 7:30 p.m.; Sunday, Dec. 3, at 2 p.m. Cost: General admission tickets are $28 and $23 for students and seniors not including fees. More info: Visit tkapow.com
Planning, scenery and tons of twinkles make up professionally crafted displays
By Mya Blanchard
mblanchard@hippopress.com
As I stepped into the world of LaBelle Lights at LaBelle Winery in Derry, I was greeted by the voice of Eartha Kitt singing “Santa Baby.” The entrance to the lights — a new addition this year — is an illuminated present you walk through to continue up the path, under the Gateway Bridge, to the Tasting Room. Once you emerge on the other side of the building, you’re immediately immersed in a winter wonderland among classic Christmas songs and a total of 1½ million lights.
“This is our third year and we’ve been growing it steadily year over year so this is the biggest yet,” said Amy LaBelle, the founder of the winery. “[There are more than] 25 displays along the [half-mile] walk.”
The idea of LaBelle Lights first came to mind at the end of the summer in 2021 during the pandemic, LaBelle says. The idea was to find a way to serve and unite the community and create memories while staying safe.
“It just became such an awesome, successful, fun event where people are making these great family memories, taking great pictures, reminiscing, creating new family traditions, and so we just decided to keep growing it and leaning into it,” LaBelle said.
As you progress along the path, you walk through bright Christmas ornaments and travel through Candy Cane Lane and Snowflake Forest before coming across one of my personal favorite displays, a 15-foot-tall shimmery gold teddy bear. Preparing all these displays and the golf course they inhabit for LaBelle is nearly a year-long process.
“It is a project that starts for us in February,” LaBelle said. “We look at all the catalogs … we order the things we want to add, we order commercial strings of lights for things we’re going to build and we order any big pieces that we’re going to be putting on the course. … We have a 45-foot-tall Christmas tree, we have ornaments that you’re able to walk through that are 20 feet high, tunnels, it’s just quite a spectacle.”
While the displays are being custom built prior to being shipped, trees are cut down, cables are hung, items in storage are refurbished, and bridges and tunnels are prepared. Once the golf course closes at the end of October, there’s just two and a half weeks to get everything assembled.
Around the corner from the teddy bear is the bubble bridge, a sleigh and a light tunnel that brings you to the new giant Merry Mushrooms before you come across — another favorite of mine — two sparkling 20-foot-tall reindeer pulling a present-filled sleigh and a family of silver and gold squirrels.
“Every week has a different theme … to add a bit of extra fun,” LaBelle said. “There’s ugly sweater week, there’s dress like Santa week … [and] one of the weeks … we’ll be hiding elves along the course.”
Two charities, Toys for Tots and End 68 Hours of Hunger, benefit from LaBelle Lights to bring toys and food to families in need.
“I really hope people that come through LaBelle Lights will be aware of this so they can help support these charities because they’re so desperately needed in our community,” LaBelle said.
“The goal of LaBelle Lights is to create an experience for our guests that will create beautiful family memories … with [their] loved ones and to have a great time [and] to kind of be an oasis from the crazy world and just have a good old-fashioned night together.”
New Hampshire Motor Speedway. Courtesy photo by Alan MacRae.
Now through New Year’s Eve, New Hampshire Motor Speedway brings us the Gift of Lights, a two-and-a-half-mile route featuring more than 3 million lights along the New Hampshire Motor Speedway property in Loudon.
“The community of speedways across the country likes to not only celebrate the holidays, but do different things to raise funds for local charities,” said Scott Spradling, a representative of the Speedway. “There was a group that essentially spearheaded using the different NASCAR track facilities across the country to do this kind of effort, so we were approached several years ago to join and offer this local, really neat way to celebrate the holidays, so we jumped in and this is Year 13.”
Assembling more than 520 displays and 80 scenes — including 12 Days of Christmas among others — takes the crew more than 650 work hours to complete. Other highlights include the 130-feet-long infield entrance and the exit tunnel with 25,000 lights. Once you come out, you will be able to roast marshmallows and make s’mores over open fire pits.
“It started off shorter with fewer lights,” Spradling said. ‘I … remember the first time around we were excited when we got to a million of the twinkling lights and now we’ve tripled that size, so it has grown precipitously over the years.”
The Gift of Lights is a way to celebrate the holidays while also giving back to the community. A portion of the proceeds from the Gift of Lights goes to the New Hampshire Chapter of Speedway Children’s Charities and since 2011 they’ve raised more than $400,000. Goods are collected for the Loudon food pantry — anyone who brings three or more non-perishable food items will get $5 off a single vehicle’s admission on weeknights.
“One thing that’s new this year is the company that’s running the Gift of Lights for us — a company called Winterland — [is] going to give $5 coupons to local schools and then donate a dollar per car that redeems their school code,” Spradling said. “The school that rallies the most cars and families to go attend the Gift of Lights will win $1,000 for their school to be able to spend on whatever school activity they would like, so there’s a fun little competition.”
Attendees can also save $5 by participating in the different theme nights, such as Christmas sweater night on Wednesday, Dec. 6. On Sunday, Dec. 10, is Yule Light Up The Night, where you can run or walk the path.
“We’ll have thousands of families that will come and participate every single year,” Spradling said. “I think it harkens back to an innocent time … [of driving] around the neighborhood looking at Christmas lights … [and] holiday traditions that many families can remember doing and so we like to think that it becomes not just a destination for seeing pretty lights but it becomes a really fun family tradition.”
Lights by the pros
LaBelle Lights at LaBelle Winery Where: 14 Route 111, Derry When: Tuesdays through Saturdays, 4:30 to 9:30 p.m., through Sunday, Jan. 7. Cost: Tickets range from $4 to $18 and are free for children 3 years old and younger. More info: Visit labelle.com/lights.
Gift of Lights at NH Motor Speedway Where: 1122 Route 106, Loudon When: Hours are 4:30 to 10 p.m. on Friday, Dec. 1, and Saturday, Dec. 2; Thursday, Dec. 7, through Monday, Dec. 25; and Friday, Dec. 29, and Saturday, Dec. 30.; 4:30 to 9 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 30; Monday, Dec. 4, through Wednesday, Dec. 6; Tuesday, Dec. 26, through Thursday, Dec. 28; and Sunday, Dec. 31. Cost: Tickets are $35 per car load, $60 per bus, limousine or RV, and cost $2 in addition per person when there’s more than 15 guests. More info: Visit nhms.com.
Charmingfare Farm Where: 774 High St., Candia What: Charmingfare illuminates the season with Santa’s Christmas, when the farm transforms into a festive wonderland with a horse-drawn sleigh ride through a trail adorned with holiday lights and 12 holiday scenes leading to the North Pole. Families can visit the Reindeer Barn, send Christmas letters and enjoy Mrs. Claus’ Bakery. When: The event runs on Saturday, Dec. 2, and Sunday, Dec. 3; Friday, Dec. 8, through Sunday, Dec. 10; Friday, Dec. 15, through Sunday, Dec. 17; Wednesday, Dec. 20, through Saturday, Dec. 23. Pick a time when you buy tickets for either a four-person or a 10-person sleigh ride. The week post-Christmas, Charmingfare holds an Encore of the Lights event, where attendees can “climb aboard our horse-drawn ride and travel 30 minutes through our Christmas light displays and see the Reindeer at the North Pole,” according to the website. The event also includes Mrs. Claus’ Bakery, a visit to the barnyard, a campfire and more. And ring in 2024 with a New Year’s Eve Ride. This evening event features a fireside meal, music and a ride along the trail of holiday lights. More Info: visitthefarm.com.
9th annual Hollis Luminaria Stroll & Tree lighting Where: Monument Square, Hollis When: Saturday, Dec. 9, at 4 p.m.
Candlelight Stroll/Vintage Christmas at Strawbery Banke Where: 14 Hancock St., Portsmouth When: Fridays, Dec. 8 and Dec. 15, and Saturdays, Dec. 2, Dec. 9 and Dec. 16, from 5 to 9 p.m., and Sundays, Dec. 3, Dec. 10 and Dec. 17, from 4 to 8 p.m. Cost: Tickets are $32 for adults, $16 for children 5 to 17 years old and free for children under 5 years old. More info: Visit strawberybanke.org.
LIGHTS AND ENERGY
Different lighting options can significantly impact both your energy bill and the environment. Doran Dal Pra, co-founder of The New England Holiday Light Co., a decorative lighting design and installation service based in Hooksett, shared some expert tips to help you ensure that your holiday lights shine brightly without putting extra strain on your wallet or the planet.
A critical aspect of setting up holiday lighting, according to Dal Pra, involves assessing the electrical load of the circuit used.
“[For] a homeowner, knowing where things are plugged in and how everything is run is important,” he said.
Pairing holiday lights with outdoor outlets already powering high-energy appliances such as refrigerators and dryers can risk overloading circuits.
“Those can use a ton of energy, and you can trip something if the lights are on and you start those appliances,” Dal Pra said.
The choice of lighting type can also significantly affect energy consumption.
Though “incandescent lights look nice,” Dal Pra said, The New England Holiday Light Co. uses exclusively LED lights due to their lower energy usage.
“There’s a remarkable difference in the amount of energy drawn by incandescents versus LEDs; LEDs draw a fraction of the power that incandescent lights do,” he said. “You’ll see it on your electric bill; LEDs have a dramatically reduced impact on the end consumer.”
The enhanced efficiency of LED lights not only conserves energy but also enables the use of more lights per outlet
“You can run a lot of lights off a single outlet with LEDs due to their lower power requirements — much more than incandescents,” Dal Pra said.
While LED lights were once thought to be less vibrant and colorful than incandescent lights, Dal Pra said, they have “come a long way” and include new technology that provides more decorating options.
“The range of products available now is enormous, and the level of customization and programmability is really cool,” he said. “You can get standard colors, programmable colors, and do all sorts of effects.”
Finally, consider responsible disposal of your old or unwanted holiday lights.
“Instead of throwing them away, there are places that recycle holiday lights,” Dal Pra said. “Some places will even pay you for them because of the copper in the wires.” — Angie Sykeny
Festive brilliance
Holiday lights bring joy to local neighborhoods
By Renee Merchant
The holiday season is marked by the glow of lights, and some people create bright, eye-catching displays. We talked with homeowners who do these lights to see what goes into creating an extravagant display.
Dan Jobin designs his residential light show, which he calls Jobin Christmas Lights, in Bedford. He has been doing displays since 1982.
“It just grows bigger every year,” he said. “We’re over 100,000 lights now.”
Jobin didn’t acquire his collection of holiday decorations overnight; he said he picks up new pieces and more lights each year.
The most cost-effective way to build a collection, he said, is to buy discounted lights after the holidays.
“I try to pick up a standard type of light and then watch for those to go on sale so that [it’s] consistent,” he said.
Jobin’s light show has more to it than the visual aspect. It is synchronized to music that plays through speakers in the yard, beckoning visitors to roll their windows down or step out of their cars to hear the music.
When the weather is nice, Jobin likes to stand outside to meet the visitors and pass out candy canes, and he collects monetary donations for a local chapter of Make-A-Wish.
“We have a donation bin out front,” he said. “We’ve given Make-A-Wish over $30,000 in the last seven years.”
Mark Mousseu, another holiday lights enthusiast, has been doing his light show in Hudson, called Hudson Christmas, for about 25 years.
Unlike some new types of lights that are computer-generated, like pixels and projections, Mousseu’s collection is mostly wire frames, which are shapes or figures made out of metal that have lights attached to them.
He said the process for setting up his display starts around Nov. 1, and his family helps out.
“Paul … my stepfather … sits down and goes through the pieces we have and figures out what we’re going to use that particular year,” he said.
Once the display is planned out, Mousseu makes sure the wire frames are working properly.
“We check the lights, we check the figures, make sure everything’s all set … dig through the piles of stuff we have, bring them down and set them up,” he said. The lights are turned on each night from Thanksgiving until Christmas.
Jobin puts his lights up before Thanksgiving in the afternoons while the weather is nice.
“Generally, I start with things that are off the ground until the leaves are gone. So on the house, on the roof, on the bushes, on the trees — that typically gets done first,” he said. Once the leaves are cleaned up, Jobin will start putting out the ground displays. Like Mousseu, he lights his display on Thanksgiving night.
A few days after Christmas, Mousseu takes his lights down in one day.
“It’s one day, assuming we don’t have 2 feet of snow,” Mousseu said. “If we have 2 feet of snow, it’s probably a couple of days and it’s a little more difficult.”
When Mousseu takes the figures down, he sets them into two garages to thaw out before stacking them side-by-side in an attic until next season.
When Jobin takes his decorations down, he puts away the things on the ground first, like the arches over the driveway and the decorations along the street. Then he removes the lights from the trees before taking things off the house.
“Some of the stuff on the house stays up,” he said, “But for the most part we take as much as we can down as quickly as we can.”
Mousseu and Jobin both said that they host annual light shows because it gives them an opportunity to connect with the people in their communities.
“[It’s] the joy of seeing people see it for the season,” Mousseu said.
“They were kids when their parents were bringing them,” Jobin said, “and now they’ve grown up … and they’re bringing their kids.”
More local light shows
An Otterson Christmas is at 37 Otterson Road in Londonderry. Visit facebook.com/ottersonchristmas.
Callaway Christmas Light Show is at 15 Pasture Drive in Goffstown. Visit facebook.com/goffstownchristmaslights.
Christmas in the Kings is at 3 King Edward Drive in Londonderry. Visit facebook.com/ChristmasInTheKings.
The Daly Family’s Festival of Lights is at 51 Pond Lane in Fremont. Visit facebook.com/Dalyfamilyfestivaloflights.
Holt Family Christmas is at 118 Marathon Way in Manchester. Visit facebook.com/holtchristmas.
Hudson Christmas is at 75 Pelham Road in Hudson. Visit facebook.com/hudsonnhchristmas.
Jobin Christmas Lights is at 8 Stephen Drive in Bedford. Visit facebook.com/JobinChristmasLights.
Lamprey Village Lights is at Lamprey Village Drive in Epping. See “Lamprey Village Christmas Lights” on Facebook.
Lights on Legacy Drive is at 75 Legacy Drive in Manchester. Visit facebook.com/lightsonlegacydrive.
The Southern NH Tour of Lights features addresses from 14 towns, coordinated by their Parks and Recreation Departments. Put your address on the list by Dec. 4; a master list of addresses will be released Dec. 8, according to merrimackparksandrec.org/nh-tour-of-lights. Participating towns include Amherst, Auburn, Bedford, Danville, Derry, Goffstown, Hampstead, Hudson, Litchfield, Londonderry, Merrimack, Nashua, Pelham, and Windham.
The Southwest NH Tour of Lights features the towns of Amherst, Milford, Troy, Fitzwilliam, Rindge, Greenfield, Swanzey, Antrim, Peterborough, Jaffrey and Keene. Those Parks and Recreation departments will be taking locations through Dec. 3, with a viewing starting Dec. 9
Q&A with Justine Callaway of Callaway Christmas Light Show in Goffstown
When did you start doing this and what inspired you to do so?
I’ve been doing it for about 11 years I would say. My son is almost 13 now and I saw that he enjoyed Christmas lights when he was born. It started a little small [with] a couple of Christmas lights [and] he seemed to really enjoy it and it just kept growing from there. Then I would say about nine or 10 years ago we started collecting money for charity and then it became an additional cause to keep doing it every year. … My son started it and then the charities kept it going.
Callaway Christmas Lights. Courtesy photo.
How do you go about raising money for those charities?
We’ve always chosen a veterans-based charity and effectively we offer a QR code for people to be able to donate online and we also take donations through a little public service announcement in the middle of the show and people donate with cash in … a little donation bin beneath the mailbox. People have donated a lot. I would say since we started raising money we’re a little over $60,000 in charitable donations that we’ve just passed right on to three different charities over the course of the last few years.
What are the names of those charities?
We started with the Wounded Warrior Project and then we did Homes For Our Troops and now we have a local charity called the Worker Bee Fund and that’s a Goffstown-based charity that does work for local veterans.
What goes into preparing and assembling the light displays?
It’s lots of time out in the cold. … There’s a lot of time spent setting up the lights, probably seven or eight full days of time… . A lot of time … goes into writing the programs that make the music go with the lights and broadcast so people can catch it when they’re at the show.
How do you go about matching the lights with the music?
There’s a software package that I use that allows me to listen to the song and then create effects for each of the lights on the house as I go. So I have to listen to the song … in little five- to 10-second increments. I probably listen to each song that I program 200 times so … when I hear it in the show [it’s] a little less enjoyable since I’ve listened to that same song 200 times over and over again, but it basically is me sitting at a computer telling the software what to do so that it times to the lights every time I change an effect for one of the different parts of the show.
Do you have a background in doing stuff like that or did you learn specifically for this?
No, I’m very bad at it, probably in reality. It may take other people less time than me. I do have an engineering degree but it has nothing to do with this type of programming … I think I have seven networks that I have to run in my front yard and a number of other things that I had to learn as I went along, so it helped that I built it slowly because it was hard to get those things figured out easier.
When did you start incorporating the music with it?
That was probably … 10 years ago so that second year I think I added music. It was very simple, I think I just had 10 windows that would change color with the music and now there’s obviously a lot more in the yard as well.
How do you feel it has grown in popularity?
I think it’s been … pretty steady for the last three or four years. I think people loved it during Covid because they had to stay separate from others … [and] were out looking for something to do, [and] I think people were looking for that sort of display. The best part is … you can hear … the kids screaming ‘There’s Santa!’ or singing along with the songs and that sort of thing. … A lot of people tell me we’ve been doing it long enough that it’s part of their family traditions around Thanksgiving or around Christmas so it’s definitely become a high-pressure situation to get it started on time.
How many lights do you incorporate every year?
We use something called pixels, so each pixel can change the color … any time, and we have about 35,000 pixels. … I also have little blinking strobe lights, probably another 10,000.
How do you keep everything protected from the weather elements?
They’re just laying out there in the grass and … they’re low voltage, most of them, so they don’t end up shorting out when there’s water and moisture.
How will the show be different this year?
This year we’ve added a couple of new elements that I have yet to figure out so I’m reluctant to tell you, but we’re hoping to add something basically every year. This year we’re adding two little trees that will sing along with the music so they’ve got eye motions and mouth motions … just to … tie the music in a little bit better.
— Mya Blanchard
Featured photo: The Proposal Ball at the LaBelle Lights. Photo by Mya Blanchard.
