Annual festival a Dickens of a good time in the Dundees

While last year's Dickens in Dundee festival was almost sabotaged by a foot of snow, this year's festivities were able to avoid -- for the most part -- the first major snow event of the year.

Saturday's snowflakes floated down as the annual festival in East and West Dundee was winding down, providing a fitting end to the holiday tradition inspired by Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol."

"It was a beautiful way to end it," Dickens in Dundee volunteer Pam Griffin said. "Everything was wrapping up as the weather was turning on us."

Last year's weather wasn't so kind.

In 2006, the event's organizers decided to continue with the planned events despite the 12 inches of snow dumped on the region in the previous two days.

This year, good timing, a Dickens committee that had one year of experience under its belt and greater involvement from the community and local businesses combined to ensure everything went smoothly.

"Everything was ready to rock and roll this morning," Griffin said. "Everything went off without a hitch."

The newest wrinkle in the 20-year-old festival was the Fezziwig Family Festival on Friday, the first day of Dickens in Dundee.

Hundreds of locals packed into Emmett's Tavern in West Dundee for violin performances, madrigals, drinks and appetizers.

"It was crowded," Griffin said. "There was a lot of people. It was just a nice way to end the evening."

The festival continued Saturday morning with the annual Spirit of Christmas parade through downtown East and West Dundee. The parade was bigger than last year, with more than 40 entries.

Other highlights included:

• The Living Windows display, in which actors recreated holiday scenes from Charles Dickens' era in store windows along Main Street.

• The annual Dundee Township Lions Club's Christmas Tree Sale in West Dundee's Grafelman Park.

• The Dundee Lions Club Festival of Trees, featuring Christmas trees decorated by children from local schools, also in Grafelman Park.

• Gingerbread house decorating at the First United Methodist Church, just east of the park, in West Dundee.

This was the second year volunteers from East and West Dundee have run the event.

For the first 18 years of its history, Dickens in Dundee was run by the Dundee Jaycees, which disbanded last year because of declining membership.