It’s easy to forget how commonplace and uneventful the city of Evansville is whenever you have a busy schedule, yet all it takes to refresh your memory is a month off of school in the River City.

Now, don’t get me wrong – there’s a part of me that will always love Evansville. I’ve lived here my whole life, so I’m heavily invested in this place. However, I do think that some constructive criticism is in order.

I think that with a bit of collective creativity and affirmative action to execute that creativity, we could make great strides in becoming a community of social and cultural significance. Evansville is in no way, shape or form a lost cause.

These musings began in my head back around Christmas time and again with the start of the New Year. I couldn’t help but notice the lack of character in our city’s holiday festivities. The only true Christmas lights exhibit that I was aware of was the Ritzy’s Fantasy of Lights, which has been the same every year that I have gone to it.

It’s hard to find the “Christmas spirit”in a city where the efforts of promoting that spirit are non-evident. It disheartens me to hear about Newburgh and New Harmony’s Christmas traditions because, despite their small size, they sound more appealing to me.

When the ball dropped on New Year’s Day, my girlfriend and I brought in the New Year’s from the living room of her apartment. I find it sad that we deemed that the best way to do so, and as we watched the local network affiliate, it was brought to my attention that the city of Vincennes has an annual New Year’s tradition that involves dropping a watermelon (to mimic The Ball at Times Square, of course).

This is what I’m talking about.

I am tired of cities with significantly less state funding having significantly better holiday traditions than us. I understand that there are more important things that to worry about and that this shouldn’t be as high of a priority, but I do feel that something needs to be done.

I know that, on some levels, becoming mundane and routine as a city is unavoidable. As the old saying goes, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

But we’re pretty well broke, folks. So let’s make a change – make a fix – for the holidays!