Carols and Pie, Oh My

With nearly all holiday events canceled in Lincoln this year, Lincoln residents have two new opportunities to come together and celebrate while still observing social distancing.

On Christmas Eve, the Valler family plans to lead caroling at the pavilion in Hooper Park starting at 4 p.m. Scott Fry is scheduled to help out, and local churches and other community groups have been invited.

"Anyone can come and sing with us," said Tiana Valler. "Everyone is invited to come. We'll have speakers so they can hear well enough. They can sit in their cars or they can come out and stand around the pavilion and hear, but that way we'll have social distancing Christmas caroling."

Valler said the caroling will probably last for about 45 minutes. There won't be any practice ahead of time, and she added that there is no pressure like there might be with a more formal performance.

"However it turns out is great," said Valler.

On Christmas Day, the Vallers will be serving free pie and coffee outdoors to seniors at the Heritage House starting at 4:30 p.m.

"We'll have Christmas music and Christmas lights. It's a Christmas present for all the seniors," said Valler. "They can park next to people and talk or they can bring the people that they're usually with in the car with them. We kinda wanted to be able to have some socialization, even though they're in their cars. And they can wear their masks and talk to each other and be warm. If they're not coffee drinkers, they can have tea."

Valler said that, like most events this year, the outreach activities her family usually does at Christmas were all canceled.

"Then we saw the article where Denny was talking about the seniors, and I was like, 'Oh, my goodness.' So, it was just trying to figure out, we had to brainstorm how to create community safely and specifically for seniors," said Valler.