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Madison Main Street kicked off the holiday season with our annual Holiday Open House event on November 10. The annual event is centered around our collectible cookie tins, which feature a commissioned design depicting a scene in Downtown Madison scene. Once participants purchase their tins at the Madison Main Street office, they participate in the cookie crawl to collect their cookies from ten different downtown locations. It is like trick-or-treat, but with cookies! This year's unique design was created by Maria Napoli and each tin came pre-stocked with cookies from Chickadee's Home Bakeshop.
![Santa](https://msa-media.rygn.io/import/UploadedImages/L68zgpWFTfa7HFQb9h08_santa-L.png)
We got the idea for the cookie crawl after attending a session at the 2022 Main Street Now Conference where we met the director of Downtown Rochester, Michigan. Their session covered low-budget, high-impact events for your Main Street. We added our own Madison twist by hiring a local artist to create the design for the cookie tins. Each year we feature a different block of our Main Street in the design. So, theoretically, if you purchase each tin, you can collect an entire rendering of our Main Street, block by block on the cookie tins. The sale of the tins is also a fundraiser for our organization and provides opportunities for sponsorship.
Attendees could also stop in other local shops, all of whom agreed to stay open late for the event, and make a purchase to be entered in our gift card drawing. After their purchase, participants fill our a "Letter to Santa" for the chance to win a $100 gift card at the downtown Madison store at which they made the initial purchase. This program helps raise excitement for downtown shopping and encourages people to spend their holiday dollars locally.
The event was a great success, and we are excited to move into the holiday season here in Madison!