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Permalink Reply by Lisa Gore on November 19, 2008 at 9:50am

The Party is for the firefighters and their spouses. We give out "call pay" checks to our volunteers. Present service stars for those with 5 yr anniversaries. Watch a slide show. Have dinner and dance.

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Permalink Reply by FETC on November 19, 2008 at 9:52am

Our Department Christmas Party is for our children - We spend too much time away from our FAMILY. We have Santa arrive via a big red firetruck and each member provides Santa with a small gift for his bag before the event. Music, kids games, and we build a riser and have a big red chair for Santa to sit and call each child up by name. Great for Santa pictures and I usually deorate the riser with a FD theme, we have an old pedestal Master Box and a hydrant positioned on each side of Santa along with the honor guard flags.

If you have a jolly member willing to be Santa, when they tell some stories of that specific child or his mommy or daddy, the kids faces light right up!

Another suggestion: We use a Bagpiper/Drummer to march in for the opening ceremony at all events or graduations. To include our (firemen's ball) Someone around you must know of a piper (if your department is currently piper-less)

We should celebrate the FD Pipes Tradition not only at times of sadness but at the positive one's as well...

Best of Luck

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Permalink Reply by Lisa Gore on November 19, 2008 at 10:01am

Thanks for your suggestions. We are piper-less. We do not have a fireman's ball but I would really like to start that tradition. It is a matter of lack of help. I love the Santa idea.

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Permalink Reply by Lisa Gore on November 19, 2008 at 10:07am

The Chamber of Commerce has an annual Christmas Parade. One year we were asked to have Santa Ride on our fire truck. We made it look like rudolph. We put a big red kids ball on the front grill for a nose, cut out big eyes with foam board for the windshield, and put ears made of foam board with paint sticks attached to the back for support and made big antlers with brown felt and poly fill. I put a couple of bent hangers inside for support. We attached them to the ears and antlers to the side mirrors. On the side of the 4 fire trucks in front of rudolph we had a sign on each one HERE-COMES-SANTA-CLAUS. The kids really liked it.

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Permalink Reply by Megan on November 20, 2008 at 11:17pm

we are doing the same thing at my dept. i and one other girl are in charge of the slide show becuase i brought up the point and i am taking the initative to do it. Have fun have a few laughs we are putting funny things that happened throughout the year such as burryiing a flat head ax under a house yep tore the house down with a back hoe and asst cheif forgot it so its still there so funny things like that well have a good time let us know how it goes

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Permalink Reply by Mike Schlags (Captain Busy) Retd on November 20, 2008 at 11:26pm

Hi Lisa, First off, at least you get to call the party a Christmas Party... Where I work, we no longer are allowed to use the word "Christmas"... yes, folks were successful in taking the Christ out of Christmas... Now it's no mas...

Suggestions: Do you have a firefighter of the year award? If not, this is a good chance to recognize one man or woman who stood out and did good things. You have time still to enable people to submit written recommendations for who should receive this award. You then need to put together a small working committee with an odd number of people (for voting purposes) and review the candidates... the rest is a given.

If you are putting together any kind of audio visual program, I highly recommend that you find someone with a MacBook that comes equipped with some pretty cool presentation stuff with music. Put together a nice presentation with lots of photos, and background music and you will have a dynamite presentation. Folks will love it and so will you. A key thing to do for these is make the effort to put in words / sentences to describe what they are going to see. Remember that any successful presentation involves telling someone what you are going to tell them, telling them and then telling them what you told them...

Getting donations of gifts and having a raffle at the event is also a good thing. Proceeds from the collected revenues go to a charity or worthwhile cause that you identify, again through committee and input from others. Christmas is around the corner and you could use some of the proceeds to make some folks happier for the holidays...

TCSS, Mike from Santa Barbara : )

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