Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

VALLEY — Members of the Kiwanis Club of Valley were entertained by a brass duet and played a left-right Christmas game at Wednesday’s annual Christmas dinner program, held inside the family life center inside Langdale United Methodist Church. Gary Harris, the worship leader at Langdale Methodist, was on trumpet and Valley Police Chief Tommy Weldon on cornet.

They played cheery versions of such Christmas favorites as “The First Noel,” Mendelsohn’s “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing,” “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear,” “Silent Night,” “Away in a Manger,” “Joy to the World,” “Jingle Bells,” “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” and the three O’s — “O Come All Ye Faithful,” “O Little Town of Bethlehem” and “O Holy Night.”

The musical entertainment concluded with Harris and Weldon’s wife, Sharon, singing “Silent Night” with Tommy playing a Yamaha electric piano, commonly known as a clavinova.

Harris then performed a solo of “Mary Did You Know?” with Weldon accompanying him on the Yamaha.

The left-right game involves ten chairs being arranged in a circle with a wrapped Christmas gift on each chair.

A member of the club stands behind each chair.

During the game, Gator Kincaid read a contemporary version of “The Night Before Christmas” written in a way to mention the name of club members along with a lot of “lefts” and “rights.”

As the classic poem was read, the club members would take one step to the left every time the word left was spoken and would step right every time the word right was spoken. At the end of the poem, they unwrapped the gift on the chair in front of them.

Club President Ashley Beck thanked members of the club on having taken part in a productive year of community service in spite of COVID-19 canceling many activities planned by the club. During a surge of the pandemic in the spring, the club treated hospital workers at EAMC-Lanier to a free lunch provided by the Chicken Stop.

In October, they had a fish fry for the residents of Sylvia Word Manor. Sheriff Sid Lockhart cooked the fish on his trailer, and members of the club delivered a boxed lunch door-to-door to all 50 residents.

On Thursday of this week, the club will be delivering food to the Chambers County Department of Human Resources (DHR). This will feed a total of 14 needy families over the Christmas holidays.

Bags of peanuts are on sale at $8 per bag in the lobbies of local banks with proceeds benefiting Kiwanis Club projects.

“In past years, we have helped with children’s reading programs in local schools,” said Club President Ashley Beck.

“We weren’t able to do that because of Covid-19, but we’d like to resume that at some point in the future. We were really pleased to have made some new clothes for the manikins in our Christmas Nativity.

Our goal for 2021 is to raise the funds to purchase five new manikins.”