Hinsdale Chamber Pushes Back Christmas Walk Date

Every year on the day after Thanksgiving, Susie Duboe Bryant and her family would take the El from Howard Street into downtown Chicago. From there, they would take the train out to Hinsdale, where they would meet her father at the family business, Hinsdale Furriers. They would close the shop, go have dinner, and return in time for the start of the Christmas Walk.

“I’ve been to every single one of them since it started,” she said.

Now, 45 years since the first Christmas Walk, Duboe Bryant is worried that the tradition could be lost. This year, for the first time, the annual holiday celebration organized by the Hinsdale Chamber of Commerce will be held the one week later—on Friday, Dec. 2.

“I think they really need to think hard about it,” Duboe Bryant said of the Chamber’s decision. “We’re going to lose families that come to visit their family that week.”

Jan Anderson, executive director of the Chamber, said she respects tradition, but decreased attendance at the 2010 Walk warranted the change.

“Last year, for the first time ever, our number of attendees was down,” she said.

Chamber officials attribute that to a change in area school schedules, which gave students the entire week of Thanksgiving off of school. And with students having that entire week off again this year, it’s anticipated the event would see a similar decline.

“We just anticipate more and more people being out of town,” said John Karstrand, who serves on the Chamber’s board of directors.

In addition, the Chamber said moving the date will allow downtown merchants to have a true Black Friday. On the day of the Christmas Walk, the street is closed to traffic at 4 p.m., Anderson said.

“So now the street won’t be closed off to traffic, so hopefully we’ll be able to capture some of that Friday business that I feel has been lost by some of our merchants,” Luis Alvarez of Razny Jewelers said. “This is especially important for merchants that are struggling as well as merchants that are new in town.”

Alvarez, who chaired the event in 2009 and 2010, said the change will help bring new customers into the stores and allow more students and their families to attend and see the story books they created because they will be back in town.

“These past two years it’s been very, very popular with the kids,” Alvarez said. “In fact, we had more kids volunteer to do stories and the art work than we had merchants participating.”

Karstrand said he has heard more positive than negative comments about the date change.

“Some of the residents I talked to about it were thrilled. There’s a fair number that leave [town],” he said. “Now they can participate. They’ll be back from visiting with all of their relatives.”

But Duboe Bryant, who views the annual Walk as a thank-you to customers and their families, said after she voiced opposition to the date change in a local publication, she found others agreed with her.

“I’ve gotten 15 letters of support from other people who say they agree with me,” she said.

Anna Vojik, owner of Art Quest, is among those opposed to the change.

“Sometimes changes are very good, but this particular one, I don’t think it’s such a great idea,” Vojik said. “A lot of people who have not been in Hinsdale before, they’re visiting family and friends because it is a long weekend. This gives the merchants opportunity to do business with people who normally don’t shop in Hinsdale.”

For the last few years Duboe Bryant has visited with a German couple that make it a point of being in town for the Christmas Walk, she said. And, she has a client from Wisconsin that comes in every two years when she's in town visiting her sister for the holiday. The woman had been to her store during the Walk and came back the following Sunday.

“The way they found us was their kids liked my clowns,” she said of the entertainment she books for the event.

Now she wonders how out-of-towners will know about the date change.

“Because I’ve been here for so many years, I see the same people over and over. How are they going to tell all these people? For all these years it’s been the Friday after Thanksgiving.”

Duboe Bryant said the Chamber should have surveyed the downtown merchants before making the change.

“Maybe in this case—in most cases—you should ask the people it involves,” she said. “Yes, we elect the board, but there are times when we need to take more of a vote than the board members.”

Anderson said the date was not changed randomly and there was a thought process behind it.

After the Christmas Walk, the committee holds a wrap-up meeting. At the meeting following last year’s event, the group noted the lower turnout and suggested moving the date, she said. The idea went before the Chamber Board in March. The board approved the change, and the special request for the event went before the Village Board. Because there was some opposition to the idea of moving the date, the village delayed approval and asked the Chamber to revisit the idea, she said.

“We discussed it and chose to stick with that date,” Anderson said, adding the village ultimately approved the request.

Anderson said it’s not uncommon for changes to be made to one of the many events the Chamber organizes.

“All of our special events that we do, we’ve had to make adjustments to either increase attendance or maintain,” Anderson said.

The Hinsdale Fine Arts Festival was moved up a week two years ago after declining attendance. While part of that is attributed to the economy, its taking place over Father’s Day weekend likely kept some people away, Anderson said.

“Immediately we saw an increase of attendance on Sunday,” she said of last week’s festival.

Chamber officials said they plan to get the word out about the Christmas Walk’s date change. And the fact that it is such a tradition will help bring people back, albeit one week later.

“It’s been going on for 45 years. And  hopefully [with] the momentum from that everybody will come back out,” Karstrand said.