One of Nashville's great holiday traditions, Christmas Village, celebrates its 50th year this coming week. Founded in 1961 by the Nashville Pi Beta Phi Alumnae Club, all proceeds go to benefit the Vanderbilt Bill Wilkerson Center, the Arrowmont School of Arts & Crafts and other Pi Beta Phi charities.
For Christmas Village this is where it all began back in the 1960s, Nashville's venerable Hippodrome on West End Avenue just across from Centennial Park. And this is where Sing-Out South performed as a part of the Christmas Village festivities in November, 1966. See the photo and cut line below from THE NASHVILLE BANNER featuring some of the Christmas Village volunteers and SOS Cast Director Ted
Overman creating their own Victorian Christmas scene...
The photo above gives an inside look at the old Hippodrome, which normally was used as a roller skating rink and sports arena. But with so many booths squeezed inside along the floor for Christmas Village, I remember how crowded we were doing the show there. Our choreography was a bit bumpy that day.
When the Hippodrome was torn down to make way for the Vanderbilt Holiday Inn in the early 1970s, Christmas Village moved to the Tennessee State Fairgrounds where for many years now it has transformed the Women's Buildings there into a shopper's paradise...
Frankly that scene looks a lot like how crowded it was when SOS performed there. Some things never change much, I guess. But ironically, as Christmas Village observes a half century of spreading holiday shopping cheer, another move seems to be in the making as it appears likely (the Metro Council approving) that Christmas Village 2011 will be held at the city's new Expo Center at the old Hickory Hollow Mall in Antioch just off I-24.
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