So many local makers and sellers have lost business this year, with community craft sales and markers needing to be called off due to the pandemic. To combat this trend and keep our small-town crafters and businesspeople above water, a group of community advocates in Landmark are doing something to help.

Jenny Plett, Sara Dacombe, Marj Toews, Tish Hildebrand, and Jennifer Froese—all of whom have been involved with local arts and community fundraising before—have come together to introduce something they call A Classic COVID Christmas.

The concept is simple: people can place orders online (www.classiccovidchristmas.ca) from more than two dozen local vendors up until the sale closes on December 1. A pick-up event will then take place on Saturday, December 5 from 9:00 a.m. until 3:00 p.m. at the Heartland Community Church in Landmark.

For many crafters and sellers, putting up their products for sale online has been a brand-new concept.

“For a lot of us, adapting to change is hard,” says Sara Dacombe. “These small businesspeople are rolling with it, and putting in the effort to capture their products in words and in photos to get them online—for many of them, for the first time ever.”

Dacombe adds that more vendors are being added every day.

“We are still adding vendors daily and we are not even halfway done our sale,” she says. “So it’s not too late to invite a few more friends to join our group. It’s just so good to see something good happening. And that’s what artists and makers are so good at, putting good into the world for us all to enjoy.”

Proceeds collected from the sale will be divided among three charities: Beauty out of Ashes Haiti (run by Gary and Mavis Unger of Landmark), Inner City Youth Alive (in Winnipeg), and House of Hesed (in Winnipeg).

“At the beginning of the pandemic, I quickly honed my online ordering skills with Amazon and I felt pretty good about it,” says Jenny Plett. “As time went on and the realization sunk in that Amazon was making a ton of money while local businesses suffered, I decided I wanted to do things differently, especially at Christmas.”

This is how the group ultimately landed on the idea of using the online market as an opportunity to boost local charities.

The group is also paying careful attention to the province’s changing public health orders. The pick-up event on December 5 will be just that—an opportunity to pick up your order.

“We decided not to offer shipping, as many of our products and buyers are local and shipping can become one of the biggest cost centres of doing an online sale,” says Dacombe. “So we selected a pick-up location that was big enough to offer social distancing, separate exit and entrance, and everything we need to do to keep people safe as they come to pick up their packages.”

But since the online sale launched, restrictions across all of Manitoba have gotten even tighter.

“We are willing to adapt and offer what amounts to curbside pickup and bring packages out to people’s vehicles, with no one entering the building except us committee members,” she adds. “If restrictions mean our group of five organizers cannot meet to organize the packages, we will create a delivery system. We will adapt, and if we can’t bring people together even for curbside pick-up, we will bring Christmas to people!”

Dacombe says that people may struggle in many ways this Christmas, but the event seeks to showcase many of the things that makes this time of year so special—charitable giving, supporting local, and hosting people, even if it has to be done virtually or for the brief moment it takes to put a package in the back seat of someone’s car on pick-up day.

“Giving back is important to us,” she says. “So it’s not just about crafty goodness; it’s about creating connections with deserving not-for-profit groups who need our help in a special way this year. And last but not least, the local connections are simply important, even and especially during this strange and frightening time. It is our sheer pleasure to be able to be active in the community, in this way, at this time. Communities come together. They always have. And this is just one way we can still do that.”