For 20 years Carmel has had an event called Holiday at the Square. This year Holiday at the Square will move to Holiday at Center Green to be a part of Christkindlmarkt, a traditional German festival featuring Carmel’s new ice-skating rink, and they are asking for volunteers to help.
Murphy
Carmel Christkindlmarkt Inc. CEO & Market Master Maria K. Murphy told The Reporter, “The Christkindlmarkts go all the way back to the middle ages.”
Murphy said Carmel Christkindlmarkt was Carmel Mayor Jim Brainard’s idea.
“He loves Germany and has been to the Christkindlmarkts there and thoroughly enjoyed his experience with it,” Murphy said. “For years he has wanted to bring Christkindlmarkt here. He brought together a committee some time ago to try to bring one here and this past year he was able to get an ice skating bond approved and within that bond he included the infrastructure around the Christkindlmarkt huts.”
Those huts (seen in the illustration above) will hold a variety of authentic German crafts, foods and beverages for Christmas shoppers. Each of the huts will hold two vendors selling individual products.
“We realized with 38 huts for product and food we did not feel like we could find enough quality vendors that would represent the high-end Germanic style product that usually go along with these markets,” Murphy said. “We did not see enough vendors here in the Indianapolis area to fulfill that need. There was a board formed and though them a non-profit entity was filed for. We do have a 501c3.”
Thus, part of Murphy’s role is both finding the products themselves and finding people to sell them to festival visitors.
“I’m hiring and will manage people who run the huts,” Murphy explained. “We wanted to start with a baseline of direct German imports to create authenticity about the market. Once we had a good selection of products, when I got back and product orders began to come in, I then began to recruit local vendors and vendors who have participated in Christkindlmarkts in other areas of the country.”
Murphy was sent to Germany to procure products with a grant from the City of Carmel.
“With those funds we purchased product from Germany to then be sold. Any funds that are made from it will be reinvested back into the non-profit for next year to make it bigger and better,” Murphy said.
There are also individuals who have purchased products within the framework of Carmel Christkindlmarkt’s vision and will sell those as vendors who are not managed by Carmel Christkindlmarkt Inc.
Glühwein mugs, like those pictured above, will be a featured collectible at Carmel Christkindlmarkt. (Photo provided)
“My job has been to procure all the product for the market,” Murphy said. “Getting the glühwein mugs and working with the designers was one of my favorite projects. Glühwein is a spiced mulled wine. It’s usually a red wine that has similar spices to what you would find in the cider wassail in the winter. The glühwein is a wine version of wassail.”
The mugs she talks about are both functional and collectable, and have become popular among Christkindlmarkt fans across the globe.
“Over time, maybe in the last 30-50 years, has the tradition of mugs come in to play at the markets,” Murphy explained. “If you went to Munich, for example, you could get a mug that reads ‘Christkindlmarkt Munich’ with the year. It became a collectible item for people who go to these markets. They are small mugs and they are not very expensive, so they have become a collector’s item around the world. Chicago’s Christkindlmarkt has been going on for, I believe, 22 years now. So they have collectors who have the mug from every year.”
Carmel is starting their glühwein mug tradition in hopes of creating a collectible market for them.
The turnout for this festival could be huge. Murphy cited a study of Naperville, Ill., a suburb of Chicago, which has a very similar demographic to Carmel. In their first year holding their own Christkindlmarkt, they had 250,000 visitors. Given that Indianapolis is a very different place that Chicago, Murphy told The Reporter she would not be at all surprised if Hamilton County sees over 100,000 people visit the festival this first time.
“Last year, just at Holiday at the Square, they had 3,000 people,” Murphy told The Reporter. “We anticipate the long-term fans of Holiday at the Square coming in addition to a different interest group for the rink and Christkindlmarkt. On Nov. 18 we are going to have live reindeer and all the performances that typically go along with Holiday at the Square as part of the grand opening of this Christkindlmarkt and ice rink. We will have three things grand opening at the same time.”
Have no fear, American Santa Claus fans, as your Santa will be on hand as well.
“We are going to keep traditional Santa for inaugural day and the grand opening,” Murphy said. “After Saturday the 18th, Santa will be at the Indiana Design Center, right in front of Holder Mattress [200 S. Range Line Road] every Saturday. There will be a little Santa house. The businesses in that area will have their doors open and will have hot cocoa and different things for people to enjoy while they wait in line for Santa. We will have a Holiday Trolley that will go from the Christkindlmarkt to the Indiana Design Center, hopefully drawing people into Carmel to experience other businesses and not just see the market and go home.”
Even with a little American Santa at the beginning, this experience is focused on bringing a piece of authentic German tradition to Hamilton County for the holidays. That will involve not just German craftsmanship, but also volunteers and entertainment to create an atmosphere of Germany.
“One thing we are going to have are alphorns,” Murphy told The Reporter. “If you see the Ricola commercials, those are the long horns that are played in the Swiss Alps and the German-Swiss border. The alphorns will be there on the grand opening, Saturday the 18th and also Sunday the 19th.”
They will have ambiance music playing throughout Christkindlmarkt.
“There will be a brass trio, an accordion, a small group of singers who will go through the crowd and sing some in German some in English,” Murphy said. “We will have staged performances as well: school groups, choir groups and bands. We also have the Liederkranz. It’s a German singing group that has been in Indianapolis since 1872 and have carried on the tradition of German songs. They are going to bring their Christmas concert program every Saturday. We are very excited about this.”
None of this will be possible without a great deal of human labor, and much of that is planned to come from volunteers.
Carol Dixon is the Volunteer Coordinator and Administrative Assistance for the City of Carmel.
Dixon
“I have a lot of experience managing events for non-profits,” Dixon said. “I’ve only been working in Carmel since May and event management is one of the angles I have missed from my previous job. This is going to be such a fun and unique event. It’s something new for Hamilton County and I wanted to be part of it.”
She told The Reporter there are ample opportunities for people to get involved, even in small ways, with this first Christkindlmarkt in Carmel.
“For this season to be the success that we want it to be for all of our guests and visitors, it requires a lot of human manpower,” Dixon said. “The need for volunteers to help us carry that off is really great.”
From her perspective, volunteers will get a special perspective on this festival that will help them connect to it in ways visitors may not.
“To be part of a new event,” Dixon said. “To see behind the scenes. To be able to say, ‘I was there for this inaugural event’ and be part of the process. That is exciting to me. It helps build a personal connection with the experience.”
Volunteer shifts are not long, and there will be training for anyone interested in signing up.
“We are asking people to sign up for two-hour shifts and anyone who signs up for more than one shift will get a special gift,” Dixon said.
Murphy also told The Reporter about some of the volunteer opportunities.
“There are different roles available: beautification, helping us keep it beautiful; greeters who will want to learn some basic German phrases to say ‘hello;’ way finders who will be like information and direction assistants; and cultural ambassador – these are people who are really into the German culture and want to share their experience and their knowledge and maybe have German heritage and want to share their Christmas experiences in Germany including how it is different from here,” Murphy said.
If you want to help, you can visit carmelchristkindlmarkt.com and click on the “Volunteer” link at the top of the page. You can also contact Volunteer Coordinator Carol Dixon by phone at (317) 571-2400 or email cdixon@carmel.in.gov.
“The volunteer opportunities will be great for high school or college students who need to complete community service hours,” Dixon said. “Volunteers are the heart and soul of a successful event and we are looking forward to engaging the community in this exciting new holiday adventure.”
According to Dixon, you can find more information online at: