Moab’s Holiday Spirit: Festive Events and Traditions in Canyon Country

Nestled in the serene beauty of Canyon Country, Moab transforms into a winter wonderland where sandstone arches glisten with snow, and the community gathers for festive traditions like the dazzling Electric Light Parade, cozy craft fairs, and spirited holiday celebrations that warm even the chilliest nights.

Holly Lammert

December 22, 2024

Holiday cheer fills the beautiful valley where Moab, Utah rests from the tourist season. In the winter months, the La Sals turn white and snow clings to the sandstone arches. During this time, while the clamor of tourism ebbs, a different type of magic is present. The community comes together to be entertained and in good spirits during the darkest time of the year. The holiday season kicks off in Moab with a flurry of festivities the first weekend in December.

On Friday, December 6th at 5pm, the Moab Chamber of Commerce will lit a large pine tree in Swanny Park. Children and their parents can visit Santa Clause, snack on cookies, and sip hot chocolate.

The holiday craft fair took place at the Moab Arts and Recreation Center (111 E 100 N) on Friday December 6th and Saturday December 7th . Artists presented their handmade goods and townies made get a jump start on Christmas shopping from their crafty neighbors. Featured artisans displayed photography, paintings, ceramics, textiles, sculpture, jewelry, glass work, woodwork, metalwork, candles, soaps, salves, and baked goods.

Local groups such as the BEACON kids string ensemble and the Valley Voices Choir fill the building with holiday cheer. While you won’t find a Walmart in town, you are sure to find unique gifts here and at the storefronts that line historic Main Street.

On December 7th , Main Street was shut down for a night as the community came together for the Electric Light Parade, presented by the Moab Chamber of Commerce. Various groups in the community decorated floats and passed out candy and hot chocolate to the whole town. A group of bicyclists known as the ‘Moab Bike Party’ decorated their bikes with lights and pedaled together as a many-wheeled float, congregating at a traffic stop for a few dizzying laps around the normally traffic-filled intersections of Highway 191.

The third annual gathering for this float will feature the theme ‘Holly, Jolly, and Gaudy Holiday’, and riders are asked to wear tacky tinsel and goofy holiday decor. Partnering with Moab Trail Mix, they will represent a people-powered float. It’s good, clean fun for everyone.

Townies enjoy gathering at The World Famous Woody’s Bar, sharing the coolest beer in town and warming up by socializing and dancing. On the Christmas kick-off weekend, live music filled the space hosted by the well-loved local band, Stonefed. According to Jon Olschewski — long-time Moab resident and lead singer — December marks the true end of the tourist season, though he’s seen the town transition over the years to accommodate more visitors even in the winter months.

Back in the day, a trip to City Market served two purposes — sustenance and socializing. Now, Gloria’s Cafe stays open all winter, and Pasta Jay’s only closes for two weeks. While Moab may not be known for its snow — in fact, tourism seems to drop when heavy snowfall brings the masses to the slopes of the Wasatch — Olcheski laughs thinking of one winter when 18–19 feet of snow buried the town “not practiced in the art of snow removal,” and laments, “Why did I not just leave?” as many others do during the winter.

The hearty folk that stay around for the season are rewarded with community gatherings galore. For example, the Moab Locals 10K (MoLo) is a fan favorite race for those wishing to continue Turkey-trotting into the next holiday. Restarted last year, this annual event, sporting a six-mile downhill race with runners in costume, heads out from the Golf Course and finishes by the hospital. The fun and festive race was held on December 7th.

Other informal events keep Moab locals active in the depths of winter. These include caroling at the Senior Center and harvesting Christmas trees in the La Sal mountains (with a permit from the Forest Service, of course). Many residents take to the ice to keep moving and warm, playing hockey at Ken’s Lake when it freezes over.

The sun sets early in Moab as it snuggles below the valley rim. Hikers, jeepers, mountain bikers, climbers, and canyoneers should be aware of the fast fall of night, as temperatures in the desert can drop dramatically. However, even at night, the guiding light of candles at the various churches celebrate the traditions of the holiday season. Those wishing to celebrate the nativity tale can gather at the Community Church of Moab which offers a traditional candlelight service December 24th at 7pm.

A local tells her tale

For long-time, nearby Castle Valley resident Christy Williams, Christmas is a time to come together. With Nordic blood running through her veins, she celebrates the season with the ideals of Hygge — a Swedish term rooted in coziness.

Williams, a self-proclaimed “free-stylie,” and owner/builder of her abode in Castle Valley, recalls a time when being grateful for electricity was paramount. Her property evolved from an empty lot with a school bus and a recycled movie prop teepee to the barebones beginnings of a home just in time for Christmas Eve in 2002. Her family of four celebrated with maple syrup snow cones around a sprig of juniper for a tree and shared lots of laughter to brighten the day. While today’s fast-paced holiday season can be dizzying for many, Williams appreciates the solitude of her rural lifestyle, after making the most of what she had.

“If I pay attention to the quiet of the snow and of the night and of the infinite ticking of the clock, it’s as simple as it ever was,” she said.

Listening to music was a staple of her childhood, collecting records at age six and working as a DJ by the time she was a teen. Combined with her irrepressible optimism and community spirit, Williams established the local radio station KZMU. Around the holidays, she hosted a Christmas show called ‘A Very Christy Christmas.’ The airwaves allow Moab residents, like business owner and renowned fossil hunter Lin Ottinger, to share their experiences. One year, Ottinger recited a poem he wrote for his grandson that invokes the special spirit of Christmas in Canyon Country.

As the Grand County Hospice Chaplain, Williams reflects deeply at this time of year around the meaning of life, and who matters to us. She’s part of an interdisciplinary care team that offers a much needed grief counseling session at the Grand County Library for anyone who has been touched by loss. She harnesses the power of story as a tool to combat depression, which seems to creep in when the light is far away. She cites Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Story, The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, and It’s a Wonderful Life as ways to bring us back to simple human kindness. And for Williams, that’s the pure Christmas spirit that is demonstrated by Moab’s accepting community. While the tune of Christmas may have changed over the years, the true magic for townies is the celebration of community.

Feature Image: Moab’s Electric Light Parade starts the holiday season. Photos by Holly Lammert.

Community Events, Holidays, Moab

Holly Lammert

Holly Lammert is a teacher, coach, climber and writer who lives in Moab. She currently teaches math at Grand County High School as well as yoga at various places. Mostly, she is motivated to get kids outside to experience the engaging classroom of nature and connect those themes to their lives and the world. When not in school, she’s working on a project to convert a once-active school bus into a camper/energy lab/think tank to let learning roam and inspire small groups of wanderers. She runs a summer camp called Elements of Change, where participants can experientially study science and mythology and build skills in grassroots activism, along with a girls support and self-discovery group called the Artemis Project.

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In the late 1950s, Edward Abbey took a job as a park ranger at Arches National Monument, just outside Moab. What he found there, and what he watched happen to it, would shape the rest of his life. Roads were being cut into the canyon country. Cars were replacing foot traffic. The National Park Service, in the name of accessibility, was engineering a kind of industrialization of the wilderness he’d come to love. Abbey wrote about it in Desert Solitaire, published in 1968, and the anger in that book wasn’t abstract. It came from watching something specific be changed by people who either didn’t understand what they had or didn’t care.

Grand County has long been the most reliably left-leaning county in the state, a fact that puts it in sharp contrast to nearly everything around it. To understand how that happened, and where things stand now, I spoke with longtime residents and politicians who’ve watched it from the inside, people who’ve served in local government and lived through the shifts firsthand.

Robert Greenberg.

Bob Greenberg came from New York in 1976, took a job at the community mental health center, and never left. He went on to chair the Grand County Democratic Party and serve on the county council. When he arrived, he said, “the Democratic Party was said to be able to meet in a phone booth” — and even then, its members were a contradictory bunch. Yellow Dog Democrats from the oil patch were fiscally conservative but surprisingly open socially, allowing different demographics to feel safe moving to the county.

“The town fathers were desperate to have new people come to town,” Greenberg recalls. “They just didn’t want the people who actually showed up. They wanted some other people.”

What followed was a demographic shift nobody planned. The people who filled the gap left by the bust were river guides, federal agency workers, artists, and eventually waves of outdoor recreationists discovering that southeastern Utah was among the most spectacular landscapes on earth. Tourism ended up being the only economic development avenue that actually worked. Manufacturing never had the labor force or market access, sewing factories came and went. The people the tourist economy attracted tended to be younger, more outdoor-oriented, and more liberal.

Kevin Walker.

Kevin Walker, a former Grand County commissioner who moved here in 1990 for the landscape, puts the county’s diversity in context. “Moab [is] a pretty diverse place since, I think, at least the 1950s with the uranium mining boom,” he says. “So it’s not a typical Southern Utah town.”

Part of what makes Grand County distinct is self-reinforcing. Federal agencies like the Park Service, the Forest Service, the BLM, have large presences here and pull in a different demographic than surrounding counties. People looking to live in Southern Utah with certain values gravitate toward the place where those values already have a foothold. Over time, that critical mass has made Grand County what it is politically, while neighboring counties went in very different directions.

The defining conflict in Grand County has always been over land.

In the 1970s and 80s, it was extraction versus preservation in the starkest terms. County commissioners floated toxic waste incinerators. A plan emerged to site a high-level nuclear waste repository at the entrance to Canyonlands National Park.

“It really, really galvanized environmentalists everywhere, but particularly in Grand County,” Greenberg says. Activists put up signs at the park entrance, watched them get chainsawed down, and came back with steel reinforcement. That stubborn, physical, unglamorous persistence became part of the local political character.

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