Community Christmas dinner attendees down, volunteers up

    This year’s annual community Christmas Day dinner had fewer attendees than last year, but volunteers and food were in abundance, said Kent Griffen, United Methodist Church pastor and coordinator for this year’s dinner.
    “I think the change of dinner location may have affected the number of people in attendance, simply because people were not sure where the dinner was this year,” said Father Lothar Gilde of St. Patrick’s Catholic Church.
    Approximately 200 people attended the dinner and did not lack for selections of good food and friendly conversation to celebrate the holiday together, he added.
    The Ministerial Alliance was responsible for communication with churches in town to coordinate bringing food to the dinner, Gilde said.
    Six churches in Imperial provided desserts, salads, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, vegetables and turkeys.
    Imperial Super Foods donated the ham for the dinner, and the Knights of Columbus prepared potatoes and eight turkeys.
    “Jody Bopp took care of many extra details that kept things running smoothly,” Gilde said.
    “We decided to open the dinner up to ‘potluck’ dishes, too, which provided a nice diversity of more good food,” Griffen said.
    There were more than enough volunteers for the preparations and help at the dinner, he added.
    As a new pastor in town and working at the dinner for the first time, Griffen said he was amazed to see how the community descended on the place and pulled everything together—making it happen.
    “Up until 10 minutes before  the deadline to have food brought to the hall, all we had was pies, lots of pies,” Griffen said. “We joked that we might have to call it the Christmas Day Pie Feed.”

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