Last December 1, Santa Clara's Christmas countdown started on a porch, not a stage. Denise Webster and Sue Yocum are third-generation co-owners of Frei's Fruit Market, which was marking its 70th year. They opened the 2025 Adventsfenster with a Swiss Miss hot chocolate display at the historic house next to their market. Fox 13 reported that the house belonged to their great-great-grandmother, Barbara Staheli. She was the first baby born to the Swiss settlers who founded Santa Clara in the 1860s.
"You hear us call it Aunt Mandy's because her youngest daughter, Amanda, was the last one to live in here," Yocum told the station.
That porch is where this season ends up. It starts this week on the lawn at Town Hall.
This Week, the Lawn Belongs to the Pumpkins
The free Community Pumpkin Walk runs through Saturday, October 31. It is open from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. each day at Santa Clara Town Hall, 2603 Santa Clara Drive. On its Family Fall Events page, the City describes it simply: build a display or just come look, walk through the park, and vote for your favorites.
The format is worth a closer look. The City supplies the lawn, the hours, and a reservation form, and that form closed October 23. The displays come from whoever signed up. The 12-hour daily window means you can walk through after dinner on a weeknight and still see the displays lit.
Two weeks later, the same lawn hosts an event built the same way, with a smaller cast.
November Hands the Booths to the Kids
The Kids Farmers Market takes over Town Hall on Saturday, November 14, from 1 to 4 p.m. The City lists slime, soaps, lemonade, and lawn services among the things young sellers have offered. A booth costs $15, and you reserve it through a QR code on the City's flyer.
Here too, the City sets the place and the time, and residents supply the event. The early-November calendar has one less festive item. The fall cemetery clean-up runs November 2 through 6. Families need to remove flowers and decorations by November 2, and they can bring them back on Friday, November 6. The City times the clean-up ahead of Veterans Day remembrances.
The Season at a Glance
| Date | Event | Where | Who makes it happen |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 27–31, 10 a.m.–10 p.m. | Community Pumpkin Walk | Town Hall, 2603 Santa Clara Drive | Residents who reserved display spots |
| Nov 2–6 | Fall cemetery clean-up | Santa Clara City Cemetery | City crews, with families removing and returning decorations |
| Sat, Nov 14, 1–4 p.m. | Kids Farmers Market | Town Hall | Young sellers, $15 per booth |
| Dec 1–24, 7 p.m. nightly | Adventsfenster | Homes and businesses around Santa Clara | Volunteer hosts, with a waiting list to join |
| Sun, Dec 6 | Samichlaus Abend | Grass across from Town Hall | The City, around a tradition council members started in 2020 |
The table runs by start date, but the last column shows the real pattern. As the season goes on, more of the event lives with residents and less with the City.
Samichlaus Abend Is the Last Night at Town Hall
The City's Samichlaus Abend page explains the date. December 6 is when Samichlaus, the Swiss Santa, arrives, and in Switzerland that marks the traditional start of the Christmas season. Santa Clara gathers on the grass across from Town Hall to welcome him. There is complimentary hot chocolate and donuts, and the City sells an exclusive collectible ornament each year. This year, December 6 is a Sunday.
The City dates the tradition's start in Santa Clara to 2020. St. George News reported how it began. Mayor Rick Rosenberg wanted a community tree lighting, and City Council member Leina Mathis proposed combining it with a Swiss Christmas celebration. One civic idea and one heritage idea became a single evening.
Last year's details are the best guide until the City posts this year's. The City's 2025 announcement priced that year's ornament at $10. The Southern Utah Independent's December 2025 guide listed a 6:30 p.m. start with the tree lighting at 7 p.m. The City hasn't announced the 2026 start time or ornament yet, so check its events page in early December.
Samichlaus Abend is also the last big holiday event that pulls the town to one spot. By the time it happens, the calendar has already started moving out into the neighborhoods.
Adventsfenster Turns the Town Into the Calendar
Adventsfenster means "Advent window" in German. The City's Adventsfenster page describes decorated windows at homes and businesses across Santa Clara, unveiled one at a time at 7 p.m. each evening from December 1 through December 24. In 2026, that is Tuesday, December 1 through Thursday, December 24, Christmas Eve.
In her Fox 13 interview, Webster explained the custom this way:
"In Switzerland, Adventsfenster is something they do every year. It's essentially a live Advent calendar. So you go to a home, they open their window... And instead of picking a chocolate out of the box, they have a hot chocolate or a treat or something for you."
The tradition is volunteer-run from the start. Fox 13 credited Sherri Anderson of the local Historical Society, who learned about the Swiss practice and brought it to Santa Clara four years before the station's 2025 story. The same report described the work behind the windows. At the Historic Dutchman's Market, Nick and Lissa Frei, descendants of the original Frei family, built miniature displays with tiny cookbooks, small portraits, and guitars barely a centimeter high. They were working past midnight to finish.
The hosts aren't paid, and Fox 13 reported a waiting list of people hoping to take part anyway. "We're just trying to just create good Swiss traditions and try to keep our Swiss heritage alive," Webster told the station.
That heritage dates to 1861. The City's history page records that fifteen Swiss families arrived in Santa Clara in 1861 as part of the Cotton Mission. Today some of their descendants host the windows, and in 2025 the countdown opened at the home of the first child born to those families.
How to Follow the Windows in December
The hosts change from year to year, so an old address list won't tell you where this December's windows will be. St. George News published a date-by-address list for the 2023 cycle, and it covers only that year. Last year's process worked like this:
- On December 1, 2025, the City posted an Adventsfenster: Countdown to Christmas page that pointed readers to a schedule of locations.
- The same page asked readers to follow @santaclarautah and @santaclarauthistorical on social media for updates.
- Each window was unveiled at 7 p.m. The City describes the result as a display of holiday spirit that keeps growing across the community through the month.
The 7 p.m. reveal is the moment to plan around. That's when, as Webster described it, the host opens the window and hands out hot chocolate or a treat.
If this works like past years, the season's path is easy to trace. In late October you walk past your neighbors' pumpkins on the Town Hall lawn. In mid-November you buy lemonade from their kids there. On December 6 you gather on the same grass for Samichlaus. Then for 24 nights, the event is your neighbors' own windows, opened one at a time across town, starting from an 1860s house next to a fruit market.
At The Red Rock Collective, the traditions people keep up by choice, like a volunteer waiting list for a window display, are part of how we understand a place. If you're planning your December around Santa Clara's windows, or you'd like to talk about what makes this corner of Washington County feel the way it does, Let's Connect.
