​It's that time of year again; the Holiday Season is upon us and one of the many happenings in the Remer area is the Chamber's annual Christmas Crawl.  This has really turned out to be a fun event and is greatly anticipated by the community.  The Chamber wishes to thanks all the merchants and businesses that participate in the crawl by opening their doors "after hours" and offer many store specials, gift drawings, food and drink.  Many thanks also to Cheire Frick who spearheads the event with downtown businesses and gets these awesome posters around town.

​Hope to see you all on the 15th!

​Thanksgiving, or Thanksgiving Day, is a public holiday celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November in the United States. It originated as a harvest festival. Thanksgiving has been celebrated nationally on and off since 1789, after Congress requested a proclamation by George Washington. It has been celebrated as a federal holiday every year since 1863, when, during the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national day of "Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens," to be celebrated on the last Thursday in November. Together with Christmas and the New Year, Thanksgiving is a part of the broader fall/winter holiday season in the U.S.  (Wikipedia)

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1. According to superstition, if you stare into a mirror at midnight on Halloween, what will you see?
2. From which region in the world do pumpkins originate?
3. Who wrote the novel Frankenstein?
4. Transylvania is a region in which country?
5. Halloween has its origins in which ancient Celtic festival?
6. Which actor played Dr. Frank-n-Furter in The Rocky Horror Picture Show?
7. Is a pumpkin a fruit or a vegetable?
8. What is the significance of seeing a spider on Halloween?
9. Which country celebrates the Day of the Dead starting at midnight on Oct. 31?
10. According to superstition, a person born on Halloween has what particular ability?

Taken from an internet site; check back for answers and more trivia fun!​

1. In which country did Halloween originate?
2. Which Catholic Church holiday is Halloween linked to?
3. What was the name of Dracula’s sidekick?
4. From which words did ‘bonfire’ originate?
5. What does the name Dracula mean?
6. What was Dracula’s real name?
7. Who was the first actor to play Wolf Man?
8. Which phobia means you have an intense fear of Halloween?
9. Out of which vegetable were Jack O’ Lanterns originally made?
10. Every Halloween, Charlie Brown helps his friend Linus wait for what character to appear?

​2017 marks the 70th anniversary of Remer's annual Harvest Festival. Inspired by the efforts of the new Community Garden program,  the Chamber chose to reflect on the original intent of the festival in 1947 which was for the town to come together and celebrate a successful growing season.  Thus this year's theme is "Celebrating The Harvest".

Preliminary line up of events:
​     Friday August 11th starts off the festival with many of the flea marketers already in place for your shopping pleasure.  At the Fire Hall starting around 5 pm St. Paul's Catholic Church is once again sponsoring a Cake Walk & Bake Sale.  Our 'Garden Party' also features food prepared by Terry Gross, Awards Ceremony at 6:00 to announce Grand Marshal and Business of the Year followed by music by The Buzzardz until Fireworks at dusk.

​     Saturday August 12th is a full day of events starting with the Pancake Breakfast sponsored by First National Bank North from 8-10 am at the Depot (Old Village Hall if inclement weather).  Walt's Bloody Mary Bar will be on hand again this year.  All day Flea Market, crafters, kid's games and various food vendors are expected.  We have the Kiddie parade followed by the main parade at noon down Main Street (new parade staging area this year due to construction at the school, details to follow), with Bingo at 1:30 and Meat Raffle at 3 pm at the Fire Hall.  More music by The Buzzardz and we wrap up the festival with the raffle drawing at the Muni.

​     The Chamber's Traveling Beer Wagon will be in town both days too!  

     The "Inspire Me" Playground committee will be having a fundraiser yard sale and silent auction set up on the corner of 2nd & Main St. 

​Parade Registration Form

​* With continued construction at the Northland School the parking lot will not be available for lining up floats and other parade entries.  This year you will need to take County Rd. 4 to Airport Rd. to 1st Ave. NE to Spruce St. to 3rd Ave. NE.  Here's a map;  Parade Line-up
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​Check back for updates...

​The Home of Bigfoot, Remer, MN presents the 2nd Annual   Bigfoot Days! July 7th & 8th in Remer, MN

​Schedule of Events:
Friday, July 7th   (at the Depot)
MN Bigfoot Research Team & She Squatchers Live Storytelling
Bigfoot Meat Raffle
Live Music (Depot & PUB)
Beer Wagon & Bloody Mary Bar
Saturday, July 8th
Pancake Breakfast
Bigfoot 5k (register at Active.com)
Bouncy House & Kids Games
Adult Bigfoot Geocache Competition
ATV Ride for Cancer
Kids ATV Parade
Kids Scavenger Hunt
3 on 3 Basketball Tournament
Live Music at the Depot
Bigfoot BBQ Contest 
Kids Bigfoot Calling Contest
Bigfoot Meat Raffle
Live Music at the PUB & Muni
Adult Bigfoot Calling Contest
For more info visit Homeofbigfoot.com or the Home Of Bigfoot facebook page.
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It has felt like summer at times for weeks, but now it's official. Kind of.
June 1 marks the first day of meteorological summer in the Northern Hemisphere.
Meteorologists mark the seasons using three-month chunks of time, and summer for them officially begins today.
But most people probably mark the beginning of the season with the summer solstice -- also known as the longest day of the year.
This year the summer solstice will fall on June 20 at 11:24 p.m. CDT.
That means that this year, summer will begin on June 20 for the most of the U.S. -- except for those in the Eastern Time Zone, when it will come on June 21 at 12:24 a.m. EDT.
The summer solstice marks the day with the most hours of sunlight for the entire year.
From now until June 21 the day length will increase by about a minute each day. Both June 20 and 21 will have the most daylight: 14 hours, 22 minutes and 39 seconds, according to Timeanddate.com.
The days will begin to get shorter following the solstice, culminating in the shortest day of the year, the winter solstice on Dec. 21 at 10:27 a.m. CST.
The seasons are marked by two solstices and two equinoxes.
According to NASA, they are determined based on the Earth's tilt on its axis and the sun's alignment over the equator.
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Meteorologists use a different method to mark the seasons, basing them on the annual temperature cycle and our calendar.
Meteorological summer is made up of the months of June, July and August. Fall is September, October and November. Winter is December, January and February, and spring is March, April and May.
According to NOAA the meteorological seasons were created for observing and forecasting purposes and are more closely tied to the civil calendar than the astronomical seasons.
Consistency is also a factor. Breaking the seasons into neat, thee-month chunks makes it easier to tabulate data and track trends.

The origins of the day are uncertain. Most people think it stems from Pope Gregory XIII. In 1582, he wanted his new Gregorian calendar to replace the old Julian Calendar. This called for New Year’s Day to be celebrated on January 1 instead of the end of March. But some people apparently didn't get the memo and continued to celebrate New Year’s Day on April 1. These poor folk were made fun of and were sent on ‘fools errands’ for a laugh.
However, others think April Fools' Day stems from the age when people used to hold spring festivals marking the end of winter with 'mayhem and misrule', according to the Museum of Hoaxes. 
Ancient Romans held a festival known as Hilaria. The occasion was used to celebrate the resurrection of the god Attis.  Hilaria, of course, resembles the word hilarity in English. The modern equivalent of Hilaria is called Roman Laughing Day.
Other non-Western cultures have their own traditions similar to April Fools’ Day as well. In India, Holi, a colorful Hindi festival that frequently entices non-Hindi participants to join in, often is celebrated by people playing jokes and throwing colorful dyes on each other.
Persian culture also has a holiday with a similar theme, known as Sizdahbedar. On this day, which typically coincides with April Fools’ Day itself, Iranians play pranks on one another.
Many other cultures have held renewal festivals in Europe around April 1 and there are references to these dating back to the 1500s.  What is clear though is that by the 1700s, the day of hilarity was well entrenched in Britain, and now April 1 is officially the most amusing day of the year.

In modern times, people have gone to great lengths to create elaborate April Fools’ Day hoaxes. Newspapers, radio and TV stations and Web sites have participated in the April 1 tradition of reporting outrageous fictional claims that have fooled their audiences. In 1957, the BBC reported that Swiss farmers were experiencing a record spaghetti crop and showed footage of people harvesting noodles from trees; numerous viewers were fooled. In 1985, Sports Illustrated tricked many of its readers when it ran a made-up article about a rookie pitcher named Sidd Finch who could throw a fastball over 168 miles per hour. In 1996, Taco Bell, the fast-food restaurant chain, duped people when it announced it had agreed to purchase Philadelphia’s Liberty Bell and intended to rename it the Taco Liberty Bell. In 1998, after Burger King advertised a “Left-Handed Whopper,” scores of clueless customers requested the fake sandwich.

The modest observance of St. Patrick’s Day in Ireland dates back to the 17th century, as a religious feast day that commemorates the death of St. Patrick in the fifth century. Patrick is credited with having brought Christianity to Ireland, and as such became a figure of national devotion and, in due course, the nation’s patron saint. The day’s importance was confirmed in 1631 when it was recognized by the Vatican. For most Irish people at home, the day remained primarily religious into the 20th century. The elite of Irish society did mark the day with a grand ball in Dublin Castle each year in the second half of the 19th century. But for the public at large, it was a quiet day with no parades or public events. The day wasn’t even a public holiday in Ireland until 1904.In the 20th century, the day became a public spectacle, with a military parade running through Dublin’s streets from the 1920s to the 1950s. Right through this period, the day was rather somber: mass in the morning, the military parade at noon and—this will shock American readers—the bars across the country closed for the day. (Irish bars didn’t begin opening on March 17 until the mid-1960s.) The military parade was replaced by a more general parade of floats and entertainment beginning in the 1960s, which in turn was transformed, in 1996, into the St. Patrick’s Festival, which still runs to this day. It’s a four-day event of music, treasure hunts, performances, and of course, on the day itself, a two-hour parade that draws up to half a million people onto the streets of Dublin. But to understand the day and its significance is to tell an American rather than an Irish story.
The shift in the 1960s, after all, to a parade in Dublin (and many other Irish towns and cities) that was celebratory and fun was directly inspired by what was happening in the real home of St. Patrick’s Day, the U.S. The first recorded celebrations of March 17 took place in Boston in 1737, when a group of elite Irish men came together to celebrate over dinner what they referred to as “the Irish saint.” The tradition of parading began amongst Irish Catholic members of the British Army in New York in 1766 when the day “of St. Patrick, Saint of Ireland, was ushered in with Fifes and Drums,” as described in J.T. Ridge’s 1988 history of the New York parade.
The day grew in significance following the end of the Civil War and the arrival, across the 19th century, of ever increasing numbers of Irish immigrants. Facing nativist detractors who characterized them as drunken, violent, criminalized, and diseased, Irish-Americans were looking for ways to display their civic pride and the strength of their identity. St. Patrick’s Day celebrations were originally focused on districts where the Irish lived and were highly localized. Through the use of symbols and speeches, Irish-Americans celebrated their Catholicism and patron saint and praised the spirit of Irish nationalism in the old country, but they also stressed their patriotic belief in their new home. In essence, St. Patrick’s Day was a public declaration of a hybrid identity—a belief in the future of Ireland as a nation free from British rule, and a strict adherence to the values and liberties that the U.S. offered them.
By the end of the 19th century, St. Patrick’s Day was being observed on the streets of major Irish cities such as Boston, Chicago, and New York, as well as in other cities such as New Orleans, San Francisco, and Savannah. The evolution of highly localized Irish celebrations to broader public events and parades tracked the rise of Irish-Americans in local governments. In the face of growing nativist opposition, to parade down major avenues in city after city announced that Irish-Americans were numerous and powerful, and not going anywhere.
The tradition of celebrating St. Patrick’s Day grew across the U.S. and became a day that was also celebrated by people with no Irish heritage. By the 20th century, it was so ubiquitous that St. Patrick’s Day became a marketing bonanza: greetings cards filled drugstores, imported Irish shamrocks (indeed anything green) showed up on T-shirts, and the food and drink that became associated with the day became bar promotions. Corned beef and cabbage—rarely eaten in Ireland but commonplace in American cities as a springtime dish—became the meal for March 17. Dietary innovations for the day have grown over the years with all types of green food, including milk shakes, beers, and candy. Once a food giant like McDonald’s latched onto the marketing potential of St. Patrick’s Day, it was clear that celebrating had jumped from a solely Irish day into the American mainstream.
The power of St. Patrick’s Day in the U.S. was its ability to survive and then spread. It survived over the decades because generations of Irish immigrants were eager to celebrate their origins. The sheer number of those claiming Irish descent in the U.S., coupled with their mobility and assisted by a network of Irish societies and the forces of Irish commerce (namely Guinness and the ubiquitous Irish bar in very town) has meant that St. Patrick’s Day celebrations have spread across the country.
The holiday also spread by becoming a means for all Americans to become Irish for the day. The shared sense of being Irish, of wearing green and in some way marking March 17, has resulted in St. Patrick’s Day being observed in a similar fashion to July Fourth or Halloween. It’s the closest thing in America to National Immigrant Day, a tribute not only to the Irish, but to the idea that Americans are all part “other.” That may be why the holiday was slower to take off among the Irish diaspora in other nations around the world, where people are less comfortable with hyphenated identities.
Only more recently, once it was established as a bona fide American cultural phenomenon, and again aided by such Irish cultural ambassadors as U2, Guinness, and those ubiquitous pubs, did St. Patrick’s Day become a full-fledged celebration—whose spirit was re-imported in its Americanized form back to Ireland itself.
So, wherever you may be on this day, raise a glass to toast not only good old Ireland, but America’s interpretation of it as well.