Geneseo’s Cookie Stroll to be held Saturday, Dec. 10
On Saturday Dec. 10 the Geneseo Cookie Stroll will take place on Main Street. The event will be a culmination of winter festivities, including music, shopping specials, and of course, cookies.
Louise Wadsworth, the downtown coordinator for the Livingston County Economic Development (LivCo), said that the event was planned by the same local organizers that planned the village’s Christmas events.
“The Main Street Merchants Association [are] the ones actually putting this together,” she said. The event is typically a direct follow-up to the town’s caroling event, Geneseo’s ChristmasSing, which was held this year on Friday, Dec. 2: “This is the first time we’ve done it the second weekend of the year,” said Wadsworth. “Other communities in the county… are doing big celebrations [on Saturday Dec. 3], so we wanted to do a different weekend.”
Although the event will not be a part of the traditional weekend of holiday events, the Cookie Stroll will be the ultimate source of holiday excitement; the stroll itself is just one part of an entire day of Christmas events complete with, according to Wadsworth, free wagon rides, ice sculpting, shopping specials, cookie-collecting, and visits from Santa and his elves. The Cookie Stroll will cost twelve dollars, and the other perks are all free. Once you purchase your entry ticket, you can stroll along Main Street, observing the holiday decor and collecting nineteen total cookies from Geneseo businesses.
For the business owners and community coordinators of Geneseo, fostering community engagement during the holiday season takes precedence over financial gain: “The promotion of the event is actually going to cost us money… but it’s part of what we do to make the downtown exciting and in the Christmas spirit. And I feel like every year we try to do a little bit more. [On Friday Dec. 2] we had two students and two village board trustees putting up lights on Main Street, so I can’t wait for [students] to see those… they did two blocks in either direction, so that’s going to be kind of special to see, and different.”
Wadsworth hopes that events like the Cookie Stroll bring holiday cheer to not only residents of Geneseo, but the college students as well. “I’m glad when the students notice [our efforts]; I really think we all want the students to be involved in our Christmas traditions… We want them to be there because it’s a special thing, it really gives you that hometown feeling and we want the students to be there, but we don’t always know how to get them there.”
Wadsworth agreed that student-run publications like The Lamron are valuable in bridging that gap between students and town residents: “We really want to meet the students,” she said, “but sometimes we don’t know how to do that, or who to reach out to. The more we can make those connections, the better it is for everybody.”
Holiday events including the Cookie Stroll will take place on Saturday Dec. 10th from 12 p.m. to 6 p.m., and the stroll itself will end at 4 p.m. Be sure to take advantage of this chance to partake in a Geneseo holiday tradition and support local businesses!