Published: November 22, 2009 05:38 pm      

25th year for Festival of Trees and Trains

Ashland — You can feel it when you walk into the auditorium of the Paramount Arts Center, Rhonda Ballengee said.

“Come to feel the magic,” said the chairwoman of the 25th anniversary Festival of Trees and Trains. “You feel it in your heart and soul.”

It has been a quarter of a century since the Paramount Women’s Association first put on the festival and it continues to draw visitors who make it a staple of their Christmas season.

“It starts the holiday,” said Carolyn Cooper of Milton.

“We come every year. We like to see how other people decorate their trees,” said her friend, Ann Blake, of Huntington.

They were among the spectators, some regulars and some first-timers, who came to the Paramount for the opening day of the festival, which continues through Nov. 29.

They come to see the theater’s already ornate auditorium made more so by a holiday forest that ranges from countrified quaintness to rococo splendor. And for the past five years they’ve come to see an ever-expanding display of large-scale electric trains running through a model landscape.

An important fundraiser for the Paramount, the festival helps the theater and its youth education programs.

The ornate, one-of-a-kind trees, many of them by professional decorators, are eagerly snapped up at auction each year. About half already have been sold, having met a minimum bid at the premiere, Ballengee said. The rest will remain available for bids for the duration of the festival.

In observance of the anniversary, the women’s association has a display in the Marquee Room. Videos, posters and scrapbooks of memorabilia trace the history of the association and its ongoing mission to make the Paramount a showplace for the arts.

The display includes framed posters from each of the 25 years of the festival.

Hours of the festival are 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily, noon to 9 p.m. Sunday, 4 p.m. to 10 p.m. Thanksgiving Day, and noon to 6 p.m.

Nov. 29.

Admission is $6 for adults, $4 for children 12 and under and adults 55 and older. Children 3 and under get in free.

MIKE JAMES can be reached at mjames@dailyindependent.com or at (606) 326-2652.