As noted in the Texas Historical Commission’s Texas Treasure Historic Business Award brochure, “Local businesses are a vital part of a community’s historic legacy and can often hold tremendous personal significance. While everything around us changes, these are the places that become synonymous with home itself. When they’re forgotten, we don’t just lose our town’s story, but part of our own, as well.

Donors who give blood at the Coffee Memorial blood donor center or any mobile blood drive through December will receive a 2022 red Christmas ornament and be entered for a chance to win a $250 Visa gift card. One winner will be drawn daily from all drives.

Santa Claus arrived at the Palace Theatre, promptly at 9 am, where Natalie Weeks of Peanut Photos had the shutter snapping as she captured images of over 200 children on Santa’s lap while he listened to their Christmas wish lists. The crowds arrived all morning— not in a frantic flood, but in a steady flow—to visit with Santa and to decorate cookies provided by CASA downstairs. At the end of the day, attendance was every bit as high as last year. “I always gauge our success by the kids,” Weeks said, adding that when she asked her son, Atticus, about his foray around town, “He said he had a lot of fun.”

Canadian had yet another outstanding performance in all phases of a 45-10 thumping of the Wall Hawks at Lubbock-Cooper’s Pirate Stadium on Friday night. Once again, the Wildcats are the kings of Region I as Canadian heads to the UIL state semifinals for the eighth time in nine years to take on familiar rival Gunter.