KICKAPOO TWP, Ill. — If the year 2020 has been The Grinch in time form, the Fargo Ridge section of Edwards is set to become the real-life version of Whoville.
The 20-house neighborhood will participate in the Worldwide Christmas Eve Jingle 2020, a Facebook event that was originally created for a small English neighborhood but went viral and, as of Thursday, had close to 500,000 worldwide attendees.
“My wife had seen the posts saying at 6 P.M. on Christmas Eve, it would be really great if the entire world rang bells,” said local organizer Brian Rezac.
“We decided to kind of take that idea and run with it on our street. My sister actually went to Hobby Lobby and picked up some jingle bells and some ribbon and stuff, and we made these cards with some very basic instructions.”
The cards (pictured below) to which Rezac referred were hand-delivered to their neighbors, and read as such:
You may have seen the social media event… Let’s bring it to Fargo Ridge!!!
Please join us this Christmas Eve at 6:00pm on your driveway or porch with these bells in hand. The sound will be grand as we ring these bells for 2 minutes to spread Christmas spirit and help Santa’s sleigh soar!!!
Look to the sky and see the reindeer fly as we end 2020 with a bit of magic, hope, and togetherness!
#christmasevedoorstepjingle2020
Rezac said the response was only positive.
“We actually just moved into the neighborhood back in May. But, one of our neighbors who has since become one of our good friends messaged us and said hey, this is a fantastic idea, and I’m going to message everybody and tell them to really take it to heart and partake in it,” he said.
That friend loved the idea so much, said Rezac, they will be taking their participation to the next level.
“They have an old locomotive bell that’s actually truly from the train, and they’re going to be ringing it. I can’t wait to hear that thing going off,” he said.
Rezac said he couldn’t rule out the possibility of breaking into some carols, and was anticipating the event to become a yearly tradition in his neighborhood, if not worldwide.
He encouraged all neighborhoods around Central Illinois to do something similar.
“It would be something to kind of unite us and connect us as a human race,” he said.
The Rezacs attached bells to this invitation and passed them out to neighbors.
