Joy of Christmas

Everyone has their family traditions on Christmas, but for one Holton family putting together a community dinner is theirs.

Every year, Holton residents enter St. Dominic’s Parish for a warm Christmas meal and to remember the person who started it all.

Hundreds of Holton residents have a little lady named Edna to thank for making their Christmas a little brighter. Looking back Frank DeVader recollected, “my wife started this in 1985, the first year we had 15 or 16 people and then it grew.”

“She was a little Potawatomie woman who had the courage to move a mountain and the heart to win a war,” described her son Marty.

When she died in 1997 her family jumped right in to keep the tradition going.

For Marty, “it keeps her alive inside of me and all of us, this is something she wanted to do and she put her heart into it.”

It was a way for Edna to help the less fortunate with a warm meal and a warm smile.

“Some of them don’t have families so people don’t have anyplace to go and so she’d have them come here and they can get a meal and feel loved. it’s the right thing to do,” said Marty

More than 20 years later, the dinner’s average attendance is around 250. Her family says it’s proof she is with them in spirit.

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