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The Junior Variety Club’s Christmas in the Park has been canceled due to weather concerns. While the Valley City Park holiday event, which was set for Friday evening, will not be happening, the club is spreading Christmas cheer with ornaments.

The Junior Variety Club is an offshoot of the Variety Club. Some of the junior club members have mothers in the Variety Club, which has been around for years. The younger group has been heavily involved in revitalizing the Valley City Park by raising funds for new playground equipment.

“We do things to bring our community together. We have a lot of teachers, nurses and you know, people that work in a community. It’s all members that are in Chambers County. And so this is very important to us to spread joy throughout our community.”

Joy Yates, president of the Junior Variety Club, says ornaments were a tradition started by the older group. It has been almost a decade since the ornaments, decorated with Valley area landmarks, have been sold. There were around 15 designs produced by the Variety Club throughout the years for residents to collect. Christmas in the Park was going to be used to highlight the new batch of ornaments as well as the park itself.

The new ornaments by the junior club have some new features. The new ones have the junior club’s name and are shatterproof. 

“As the younger generation, we have a lot of little kids in our homes. We wanted to be able to display [the ornaments] without them breaking,” said Yates.

This year there are two designs, one of the  Christmas Merry-Go-Round and another of Valley High School. Yates hopes to add more designs in the years to come, just as their predecessors did.

Ornaments can be ordered for $20 by messaging the group on their Junior Variety Club Facebook page. Yates says the money raised will go into the club’s general fund to help needs within the community.