Westminster's Fallfest continues a proud tradition
By Kevin Dayhoff, September 25, 2013
Westminster’s annual Fallfest celebration begins Thursday
with a parade at 7 p.m. that starts on Pennsylvania Avenue and ends just below
Westminster City Hall on Longwell Avenue.
Fallfest, which boasts on its website,
westminsterfallfest.com, to be “Carroll County’s largest community charity
event,” then continues four days through Sunday in the center of downtown
Westminster at the playground and the Westminster Family Center.
For many it is one of the highlights of the year -- a time
when the greater Carroll County family gets together to celebrate everything
that is wonderful about our community.
Friday evening, Sept. 27, highlights the annual Midnight
Madness celebration of shopping and eating-out on Main Street in downtown
Westminster.
Fallfest hours for Friday are 6 to 10 p.m., Saturday, 10
a.m. to 10 p.m., and Sunday from 12 noon to 6 p.m.
[…]
Although there are anecdotal stories of various community
fall celebrations throughout Westminster’s history; our current version of
“Fallfest,” the annual parade and Midnight Madness specifically draw upon a
tradition that started many years ago when Westminster came together in
September for an event sponsored by the Retail Merchants Association called
“Westminster Days.”
An August 29th, 1947 article in the old, out-of-print
Democratic Advocate newspaper reported, “At the weekly luncheon meeting on
Monday at the Charles Carroll Hotel the Retail Merchants Association of this
city, plans were completed for the Westminster Days which will be held on Sept.
25 and 26. President John R. Byers presided.”
The article then described a big parade on Thursday evening
and two days of downtown merchant sales on September 25th and 26th, 1947.
[…]