Every year, as the holiday season arrives, the Thompson's Station community finds its joy in Holidays at the Station, the beloved annual event organized by the Thompson's Station Community Association (TSCA). It brings neighbors together for an evening of celebration, connection, and everything that makes the holiday season feel meaningful. We sat down with TSCA board president, Jeanne Westbrook, who works about 1,000 hours/year on this, to talk about the event and what it means to build community in one of Williamson County's rapidly growing towns.
Tell me a little bit about the TSCA and what you guys do.
TSCA had gone dormant and about five years ago, it was revitalized, and that's when I came on the board. We're a small board of seven and we have a threefold mission: enhance what we have, like our parks, our green belts, etc as that's one of our greatest amenities; bring the community together; and keep what we have. Preserve it. What we're really working hard at is bringing the community together.
As part of holiday at the station, you also do a coat drive?
We did the coat drive last year and we were able to donate about 120 coats to Nashville, and it was an amazing thing to be able to participate in. We've been approached by a different nonprofit this year, and so our board's deciding what charitable element we'd like to include because we do like to have that. We're mulling over a couple of options.
Let's talk about holiday at the station. If someone's never attended, what can people expect when they show up? What's it like?
It is so fun. First of all, it's always the first Sunday in December, and we are holding it at our historic town hall, which the town of Thompson Station moved to a couple of years ago. It's an outdoor event with the town hall as the backdrop for it. It's a beautiful building with these great porches and overhangs. The event is totally free to the community. We kick it off with a professional musical performance by Radio Farm, and they've done this for us for several years. Then we bring in five, six, or seven of the local schools and they come in and perform, whether they are instrumental or choral or even one theatrical.
We have Independence High School, Summit High School, Heritage Elementary, Thompson Station Middle School. That's the entertainment that we have going on the main stage. We have free photos with Santa. There are face tattoos or holiday tattoos. There's balloon artists, crafts, free food. We have games for all ages. It's a little bit of a postcard kind of feel, totally family oriented from little ones all the way up to the multi-generational families. We grow every year. This year, we're expecting about 800 attendees and we have some very wonderful sponsors that allow us to do everything for free. At the end of the night, we have a tree lighting. The tree had to be replaced because it didn't make it through the ice storm last year. After the tree is lit, Mrs. Claus sits down with the children and milk and cookies and reads Twas the Night Before Christmas and then folks go on their way.
What is the history of it? When did it start?
This is our fifth year. We've done a couple of other events as well. We did a 5K run/walk. We really want to do Earth Day next year. We think that would be amazing. And I'm pretty sure we're going to go ahead and do the Easter egg hunt at Town Hall. But these things cost money and we are committed to making sure that these are free for the community. We don't want anybody worried about bringing money or having to buy things. We just want people to come out and enjoy.
Do you want to talk about who some of the sponsors are?
They're amazing. Tennessee Equine Hospital has been a supporter from the get-go. And Bradymade Events. Matt comes out every year and spends about 12 hours setting up all the lights and audio and everything and has never charged us. He has always done that. We have CAT equipment that provides some of the portable lighting and generators for us. We have Premier Pools and Spas. It's back again this year as a sponsor. We actually have two preschools that sponsor. One sponsors milk and cookies and one brings out a booth where the children get to make reindeer food as a craft. We have a lot of repeat ones, which I love. And then every year we have a few new ones, which we also appreciate.
You mentioned you were looking for volunteers. How can people get involved with TSCA?
I think our Facebook is probably the easiest way to contact us. Last year we had Girl Scouts that helped us. I think we used about 14 volunteers. We used six alone just on parking, and people loved that we made some parking improvements with all those volunteers. This year, we're looking at about 20 volunteers that we need because we have added a couple of things, and that's just for the day of, but anybody who wants to volunteer to help us plan and execute this, we welcome that too.
What else is different this year?
I have an autistic grandson and he was so thrilled one day when he found a rock that someone had painted and left around. It was actually from a school. So we got the idea that we are going to paint rocks and we are going to hide them around town this month. On the back of the rock is a QR code that will take you to our event page on Facebook. We've done 320 Christmas-themed painted rocks and we have little postcards we can hide with those.
We're going to set them out throughout the month. We're going to try to hit all the neighborhoods and some of the stores, especially our sponsor's areas, and just try to draw more people into this fun thing of finding one of the rocks and then using the QR code and going and finding out more about the event. We'll see if it works, but it was a lot of fun to make all the rocks.
Holiday at the Station is scheduled for Sunday, December 6 from 3:00 - 5:00 p.m. at the Town Hall located at 1110 Fountain View Blvd.
Facebook.com/theTSCA
@thompsons_station_tsca
"We don't want anybody worried about bringing money or having to buy things. We just want people to come out and enjoy."