Inside Perry, Georgia
Inside Perry, Georgia
Secrets of Downtown Perry's Holiday Magic: Events You Can’t Miss This 2024 Season!
Join us in this festive episode as we explore the magical holiday events happening in Historic Downtown Perry. From the twinkling lights to finding the perfect holiday gift, we’ll guide you through everything you need to know to make the most of the season.
Whether you’re a local or visiting for the holidays, this episode will inspire you to create unforgettable memories in Downtown Perry this Christmas. Let the season of joy begin!
Episode Highlights:
- Reindeer Scavenger Hunt
Hunt Santa's reindeer all throughout Historic Downtown Perry
Pick up your scavenger hunt card at Visit Perry (808 Carroll Street) - Shop Small BINGO Card
How to Play: For each qualifying purchase on the bingo card, have it marked off while shopping. For each completed row of bingo, you will get 1 raffle entry into a chance to win $200 Downtown Dollars. Pick up a bingo card from Visit Perry at 808 Carroll Street or many of the downtown businesses! - Downtown Dollars
Looking for the perfect gift for someone who has everything?
Surprise them with Downtown Dollars! With over two dozen participating merchants, you're giving the gift of choice and endless possibilities.
Learn More: https://perry-ga.gov/mainstreet/downtown-dollars - Perry Christmas Parade
You're invited to join us for the annual Perry Christmas Parade on December 7 at 10:00 AM!
An Old-Fashioned Christmas in Downtown Perry promises to be a heartwarming and enchanting experience, bringing together the community to celebrate the holiday season with a touch of nostalgia and timeless joy.
Route: General Courtney Hodges and Carroll Street - Shop Late - Extended Shopping Hours
'Tis the season!
The Downtown Perry Merchants are excited to host this year's Holiday Open House: an event to encourage evening shopping and dining throughout our downtown district.
Shop late in Historic Downtown Perry, Georgia on December 12th from 5-8PM! Enjoy specialty cocktails and drinks from participating restaurants while you sip and shop all participating boutiques and specialty shops. All participating businesses will be hosting unique giveaway opportunities for attendees. - Artesian Market
The Perry Farmer's Market is expanding for the holiday season! Visit them on Saturday, December 14 from 9 am - 1 pm. - Horse-Drawn Carriage Rides
Enjoy shopping and a relaxing ride throughout Historic Downtown Perry on December 21 from 12-3 pm. - Holiday History Trolley Tours - SOLD OUT
Need more information? Contact Alicia Hartley, City of Perry Downtown Manager, at Alicia.Hartley@perry-ga.gov.7
If you like Inside Perry - subscribe and share the podcast with friends and family. The podcast is available on all major podcast platforms.
Visit us at perry-ga.gov.
We hope to see you around in our amazing community...Where Georgia Comes Together.
Welcome to this special 2024 holiday edition of the Inside Perry podcast, where you get an inside look at Perry, Georgia's local government. We're glad you chose Perry where people make the difference. Whether you stay a few hours or a lifetime, your time in Perry will be rewarding and unforgettable. I'm Tabitha Clark, Communications Director for the City of Perry. The holiday shopping season is here and historic downtown Perry is of course the happening place all of December. So I have a downtown manager Alicia Hartley with me to talk about the absolutely jam packed agenda that we have. We got a lot going on in December and we're excited for it. Awesome. All right. So let's kick it off. I heard that there's going to be reindeer that you need to find in historic downtown Perry. Tell me about that. Yes. So Santa's reindeer have. Come to downtown Perry and they are hiding either inside or outside a handful of stores I'll give you a hint Rudolph is somewhere near City Hall. Nice. Okay, but yeah, so we will have All of Santa's reindeer are hidden someplace throughout downtown, um, in a myriad of places, some outside, some inside, some local shops, but we do have a scavenger hunt with clues to help you. Oh, okay. So there's some rhymes and riddles to help you, um, hunt all of Santa's reindeer out. Cool. So where do we find these clues? These clues will be posted online, but then you'll also be able to pick up a scavenger hunt card from the visitor center at City Hall. Um, and then also a handful of the shops will have scavenger hunt cards as well. And if you complete your scavenger hunt and you can locate all of Santa's reindeer, you can bring your scavenger hunt card back to the welcome center at city hall and you can get a fun sticker prize. Oh, nice. I love it. I know that the scarecrow fest, um, scavenger hunt was really popular. So, and that's what inspired this. We had to keep it going for the holiday season as well. And it's reindeer. That's the only time we ever get to see them while you're looking for reindeer you can also play bingo. Yes. Yes. So while you're hunting out all the reindeer and finding where all they're all hidden at, you can also pick up a shop small bingo card while you're doing your shopping locally. So for every single qualifying purchase that you meet on the bingo card, the business will stamp it for you when upon checkout. So this can be anything from like. Buy a sweet treat to spend $100 at a single location, get a present gift wrapped, anything like that. So, when you complete a full row of bingo, you can turn your card in and for every completed row of bingo you get, you will get an entry in to win $200 downtown dollars. And those downtown dollars are great gifts. Yes, they make great gifts or save it for a little treat yourself after you get through the bustle of the holiday season. Of course, of course, But there's over 20 businesses downtown that accept downtown dollars. So it's like a one stop shop gift card that can be accepted at multitude of places in downtown. One of the biggest events that we have this year in downtown is of course the annual perry christmas parade and I heard it's going to be pretty big in 2024. Yes, we have over 75 entries in this year's parade kicking off at 10 a. m. On December 7th It'll start up on Courtney Hodges right off of Kelwood come down Courtney Hodges and then up through the one way Carroll Street seven eight hundred nine hundred and one thousand block of Carroll Street and then ending once it crosses Macon Road. But you really get that warm fuzzy feeling of seeing all the kids with the schools. We have kids Three high school bands participate in this year's parade. Oh, nice. Okay, great. Um, so we're happy to, to welcome Perry High, Veterans High, and this year Peach County High to participate in this year's parade. Oh, wonderful. So, you definitely don't want to miss that one. No, absolutely not. The uh, the parade is just so awesome. It's wonderful extra special this year because it is an old fashioned Christmas parade in honor of Perry's 200th, right? That's right. So we're encouraging all of our entries to Take a step back into time really lean in to the traditional, you know red and green some garland and just the traditional Old timey Christmas. I love it. So, so much fun, you know, holiday shopping. It's crazy. A lot of people go all day or run by after they get off work. So let's talk about how downtown is extending their shopping hours. Yes. So on December 12th, um, the merchants have worked together and are agreeing to stay open and offer some specials on the evening of December 12th from five to 8 PM. Um, they did this back in October for ghouls night out shop late event. And they saw so much success in it that they want to offer this again in December for holiday shopping. So if you're not able to get by at the normal business hours for our downtown retail businesses and boutiques, they're offering a shop late night event on Thursday, the 12th from five to 8 PM. Um, and we will have a saxophone player playing some live music, some Christmas tunes, you know, all of our lights are up once it goes dark downtown and the Garland. And so, I mean, You have another opportunity to like take in all the magic. I love it because there's so many things to do is you can shop late. Yes. You can participate in bingo. That's the per one of the perfect times to do that. And you can find reindeers. You can find reindeer. Yeah. I mean, there's a little bit of something for everyone. So, I mean, bring down the whole family, let the kids do the reindeer hunt, um, while parents and grandparents are doing the shopping, marking things off of the Christmas list. I mean, you can really make a whole afternoon or evening out of it. I love it. That's going to be a very big one. busy, busy day. Um, and then on top of that, we're doing the holiday history tours in downtown Perry, December 13th. Um, so there's the 12th again. So you can also do a trolley tour, stack it up, stack up your whole evening. That's right. We're just going to put it full of holiday spirit that day. Um, so those are actually $5 a piece. They're held in 30 minute tour starting at six and pre registration is required just to make sure that we have enough people to get, you know, get on there and everything. And, uh, really, this holiday history tour was also done in conjunction with the 200th birthday, but it's also going to talk about a lot of stops are going to be along Carroll and Main Street. It's going to, we're going to tell you the history about the buildings that you see today. What it was and how far it's come. People don't realize how much history is actually built into to downtown Perry beyond the current shops that are there. Yeah. And it's come such a long way, but it's nice to reflect just like everything else. It's nice to absolutely reflect on how much success we've had here in historic downtown Perry. So you're also doing kind of something new as well, fitting it into the busy schedule schedule. Artesian Mart. Yes, we're offering, um, as a part of the traditional Saturday farmers market, that's every Saturday from nine to one, but we are expanding that on December 14th to include some more artisan vendors and arts and craft vendors to, you know, last minute shopping gifts, you know, bring you downtown, do all your shopping at our downtown businesses, but also spend some time with these pop up vendors at, um, The farmers market and the expanded artisan market. So that'll be from nine to one on December 14th, right directly behind City Hall in that parking lot there. I love it because there's nothing like a homemade gift, even if you don't make it homemade, you know, somebody did there. There's definitely kind of a, You know, a and nostalgic to it, but just something super unique and rare. Exactly. These will be, this will be the place to find all your unique finds, um, for your holiday gifts. I love it. Okay. So we talked about all of that. So one of the last things, main events, um, is the horse drawn carriage rides on December 21st. Yes. So we offer horse drawn carriage rides as a part of our small business Saturday promotion on the November 30th. Um, and we did it last year too, in 2023 on small business Saturday, and we received. such wonderful support and people loved being able to take like a horse drawn carriage ride around City Hall lawn in the City Hall Square, um, that we wanted to bring this back for another opportunity for customers and visitors and citizens to have a chance to take this free horse drawn carriage ride, um, on the 21st from 12 to 3. So if you really are like waiting to the end to do all your, Last minute shopping. This will be the last weekend before Christmas. So do your shopping, grab some lunch and then give your feet a rest and take a ride on the carriage. I mean, how cool is that going through this historic downtown and the horse, horse and the carriage are absolutely gorgeous. Yes. And they're decorated. There's some beautiful garland, some lights on the back of the carriage. So, I mean, that's really the way you can like, get around. Put the cherry on top of your holiday shopping season. Absolutely. And one of the ways that we can help close out Perry's 200th birthday as well. Um, and of course we'll end it literally with a bang on buzzer drop on December 31st. Uh, on New Year's Eve, we're going to have a lot of fun stuff there. And I know that having it down in historic downtown Perry will just make it even more special. Yes, it always does. A lot's going on. We're busy. We're busy, but that's okay. That's okay. And that's good. So we gave you a lot of information. So we will also put this in the show notes as well on, uh, dates, times, if there's a registration, we'll put the links and all that fun stuff. So Alicia, let's wrap it up by saying, why is it important to shop small? Yes. So these businesses, um, that, That are on Carroll Street in downtown Perry on Ball and Jernigan and and occupying the space in downtown. They're here. 365. These are the small businesses that are supporting PTOs that are supporting little league teams, you know, that are putting ads out in the local newspaper and things like that. So this is our time to like put a spotlight on them for shopping small, um, and really give back to our local community around the holiday season by supporting local. Um, when you were supporting local, basically approximately 68 for every 100 spent stays in your local community. Um, so I mean, it's a really large impact from the difference of, you know, shopping from some big chain online or something like that. Your impact, you know, is making a difference and is, is staying here in the local Perry community. I love it because it is, it is a major impact. It's not like it's a measly couple percentage that goes back. It's a lot that goes back into our community. Um, so we are definitely encouraging everyone to shop small because there are some beautiful things, um, in the merchants in historic downtown Perry. This will give you an opportunity to get something special, you know, something more unique. So at least if nothing else, come enjoy the atmosphere and walk around and, and see what downtown Perry has to offer this season. That's wonderful. Well, Alicia, thank you for joining me and happy holidays. Yes. Thank you. Thank you so much, Alicia, for joining us. You can learn more about historic downtown Perry at perry ga. gov. Thanks for listening to Inside Perry, your inside look at Perry, Georgia's local government. Take a look at the show notes for more information about today's episode. If you like Inside Perry, we encourage you to subscribe and share the podcast with your friends and family. We look forward to seeing you around in our amazing community where Georgia comes together.