The following day offered just as many events, from all-day racing, breakfast, lunch, a cribbage tournament, and a raffle drawing.
The wintertime festivities would not be possible without careful planning from the Snow Carnival Committee and generous donations from a multitude of sponsors.
Commitee Member Erica Anderson helped organize the event and accepted pies for the pie contest in the school gymnasium on Friday afternoon.
“This is our 80th year of snow carnival,” said Anderson. “It includes New Sweden, Stockholm, and Westmanland. We’re trying to make it bigger this year. We’ve added the dinner, the sledding, the lip-syncing contest, and pie contest this year. Once the contest is finished, we’re going to slice them up and sell the pieces to help fund next year’s carnival.”
According to Anderson, the lip-syncing contest ended in the early 1990s when New Sweden received a new school. In addition, the committee is also bringing back the barrel stave races.
“For the barrel stave races, we just take the barrel staves off the barrel, and then a rubber inner tube and tie that to your foot and the stave. We’ve made those already, so they’re available to anybody who wants to use them. I believe they stopped doing it in the early ‘90s. Every year, we’re going to try to bring something back.”
A list of sponsors behind Anderson’s table in the gymnasium thanked several snow carnival patrons.
“We have people coming out from other communities, too,” added Anderson. “We have a group coming out from Woodland that will be performing tonight. We open up our carnival to anybody in the area. We’d love to have anybody here.”
“My kids have gone to this school for four years,” said Jessica Wilson of the Snow Carnival Committee, “and we’ve been a part of it every since then. It’s a good time for everybody to get together and have fun. Winter is long up here and this is a good way to break it up.”
“I’ve been helping out with organization, selling tickets, and with donations,” said Jason Landeen of the Committee. “Back when I was a student here in the ‘80s, this used to be a big two-day event. We had a King and Queen. We did a lip-sync contest, a big supper, and a dance. We’re trying to bring it back so the kids can see what we used to do when we grew up.”
