It’s that time of year again, the St. Theresa’s Italian American Family Feast is set for its annual return on Wednesday, June 20 through Sunday, June 24.
The 22nd rendition of the festival is going to see a large effort made to cater to a family-friendly atmosphere.
“We are a family parish which is why we are making this the focus,” said Msgr. Thomas Derivan, who was been running the fair for the past four years.
“For the past 22 years, the feast has been a special feature for our parish and community, we look forward to the 22nd annual feast,” he added.
The monsignor wrote a letter to his parish that explained the focus towards a family-friendly environment.
“Times change, circumstances change and our feast changes too. Our feast, again, this year will take on a different look, more like the ‘Family Party’ which began the feast years ago… In this our 91st year, we want to emphasize that it is our families that make ‘St. Theresa Strong,’” the letter said.
While the feast in past years had been held in July, this year the parish decided to move it up to late June to coincide with school term ending, encouraging families to attend.
“We will start the feast earlier, at 5 p.m. and will end each night at approximately 9 p.m. with longer hours on Saturday and Sunday. We will also emphasize that this is an Italian-American Feast with Italian food and pastries. As usual, we will have our Grand Raffle, our Mass each evening, the procession of the statue of St. Theresa on Sunday, and the concert in the church,” the monsignor explained.
In all the years of the feast, the closing procession has been Msgr. Devrian’s favorite part of the festivities. His letter also took to encouraging feast goers to contribute to grow the feast’s grand raffle’s outcome.
“I am writing to you at this time to request your help with our Grand Raffle. Following many suggestions, this year the raffle will feature money prizes: First Prize, $25,000; Second Prize, $5000; Third Prize, $1000. We will need your special help with the raffle this year. Because we are making many changes in the feast, we will depend on the raffle to be the mainstay of our feast operation,” the letter said.
“We are hoping for a considerable profit from the raffle to assist our church. The number of raffle tickets sold in the past few years has declined. We hope to change that trend both by making the prizes more appealing and by asking your usual generous help. I am enclosing a raffle ticket, one which I hope you will be able to take. You may wish to join someone else in buying the ticket. The price of the ticket will be $100, but we feel the prizes are worth it,” the letter added.
Msgr. Devrain encourages anyone that wants additional tickets to contact his rectory.
