Christmas Market

Hello and welcome!

Thank you for taking an interest in our annual St. Thomas the Apostle Christmas Market.

The 2024 St. Thomas the Apostle Christmas Market is coming, and we can’t wait to see you again. St. Thomas’s Christmas Market, in one form or another, has been a fun and festive parish tradition for years, and we hope you can come! All proceeds will go to the Building Fund for the care and preservation of our beautiful parish buildings.

You want to help, too? Wonderful!

The STA Christmas Market Committee is in charge of organizing all volunteers, and we’d be delighted to talk to you. Because we want to raise as much money as we possibly can for the Building Fund, we really are running on volunteers and donations.

Below are some examples of things you can do (in chronological order, not order of importance – it all helps).

You can sign up to help here. (linking to the Google Form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScfEKaGAQFDTBuPsgsjuji7cBs_A8KYun6yE3PtoYn7rWpyPw/viewform?usp=pp_url )

If something catches your eye or you have a question, you can get in touch with us at christmasmarket@stapostleparish.org.

Helping can include (but is not limited to):

Making things*

Do you embroider? Make ornaments? Fold origami puppets? Throw pots? Knit booties? We love having beautiful, well made items at our Market, and we’d be so excited to see what you’ve got.

Buying things*

If making isn’t really your thing but you’ve got an eye for the lovely and unusual, we are happy to accept donations of new or like-new items. Think especially in terms of stocking stuffers and Secret Santa gifts!

Donating things*

Are you downsizing or decluttering? Do you have beautiful pieces that don’t fit your style anymore, but are still fantastic? Our Market focuses on giftable items, including vintage pieces, and we can happily take donations of décor, clean/unworn jewelry & accessories, Christmas ornaments and décor, and books (especially classic & contemporary fiction and picture books).

Wondering if your item would work? Send us an email at christmasmarket@stapostleparish.org (Please note, we cannot take textbooks, clothes, used baby/children’s items, electronics, or DVDs/cassettes/CDs/Blu-rays.)

Sponsoring things

While all goods for sale at the Market are donated, we do have some expenses, for items like pens, table skirts, and signs. If you’d like to put something in the pot, every little bit is appreciated and any leftovers will also go to the Building Fund.

Baking things

Do you make a tasty tea cake? A tempting quickbread? An irresistible sweet roll? We are delighted to accept home-baked goods from parishioners for our bake sale. You can sign up here.

Proofreading & Format Checking

Do you have excellent eyes for punctuation and a solid grasp of they’re/their/there? No, but really, we’d love some help making sure we don’t have silly spelling mistakes in our online content (perks include previews of some – though we say it ourselves – very cool stuff).

The Market Raffle

Every year we hold a raffle on the second day of the Market, and we’d love to have your help with organization, prize sourcing, ticket selling – or just buying a few tickets once sales open!

Getting the Word Out

We want everybody to come! The Market is free to enter and open to everyone, and we need help to get the word out. Do you have access to a notice board or an online neighborhood community? Are you on Facebook, in a book club or part of a local paper? We’ve got the flyers, posts or pdfs for you to share.

Setting up

Come the week before the Market, we will descend upon the school gym and transform it into a festive Marketplace. If you’re good with shifting tables, labeling price tags, arranging displays, and generally making Market magic, it’d be great to have you there to help.

Working the Market

We’re going to have a lot going on, and we’ll need people to work the selling tables, serve food, and generally help us make this a fantastic day. It’s a lot of fun, if you’ve got kids who want to help they can definitely come, and you’re welcome even if you can’t stay for the whole day.

Clean up

Once the show is done, we’ll have to put the magic away for a year. If you’re willing to give us a hand, we will be eternally grateful!

Businesses*

If you would like to make a donation, we’ll be happy to display business cards or small postcards with your information at the Market, as well as post our fervent thank yous in the Parish bulletin and on social media. Credit where credit is due! But we are a market of donations, and will not be accepting vendors.

*Please note, we are a small market and do not have the space to store goods from year to year. If your donated item doesn’t sell and you would like it back, you must make arrangements to pick it up. Any items which remain will be donated to charity.