Omaha By Design: Omaha, Only Better

by Ken Mayer

I’ve never been to the Holiday Lights Ceremony on the Leahy Mall. Not that I don’t want to go, it’s just that the Thanksgiving lighting takes place at a bad time. Usually, at that hour, my family is gathered around the groaning board enjoying our abundance.

Since I lived for many years in 10th floor apartments with views of the Mall, I’ve had the opportunity to glance out at the proceedings, and it always looked to me that the whole affair was something of a “drive by” for many people.

Despite the best efforts of several organizations, few Old Market businesses open for the evening. Who can blame them? They and their employees deserve that time off, too.

There’s just not that much to do, particularly for adults, once the lights come on.

That got me thinking about how we use our public spaces. Activities are the real bricks and mortar of a place. Without having something to do in a public space, there’s little point to it. The key is intelligent programming.

It’s not as easy as it sounds, especially around the holidays.

I don’t mean to sound like the Grinch, but a lot of the traditional stuff is pretty boring. As a music critic recently opined about a holiday disc, it makes me want to hang myself by the chimney with care.

Seems to me, we ought to include some public festivities with a bit more substance. Winter solstice celebrations probably started out as a pretty serious grownup business. Growing season was over and hopefully enough food was in storage, but the prehistoric sun kept sinking lower in the northern hemisphere sky, giving the responsible adults a fear that the world would end. But around what we know as late December, the sun started to arc higher, giving us featherless bipeds a reason to party.

Secular as that sounds, most of the world’s religions observe some kind of holiday around this time of year. And so we should, it’s a good time to take a break, reflect on the year past, and give birth to new ideas and hope.

Too bad this has all become so superfluous, commercial and generally lacking in authenticity and genuine human connection. Maybe it’s time to use some of our public spaces to provide something a bit more serious and mature. The holidays are for grownups, too.

So here are a couple of modest proposals. Let’s either come up with more for adults to do on Thanksgiving evening or move the lighting to a time when downtown’s public spaces came be enjoyed in the context of dining and socializing.

I think we need to program some public space activities with more of a grownup skew. For a few years, Omaha Performing Arts provided a glimmer of hope with a New Year’s Eve concert and celebration, but this year, it looks as though the venues will be dark.

Going forward, how about we celebrate New Year’s Eve in Omaha with the arts rather than just alcohol?

For the last 20 years or so, many cities large and small have begun having First Night Celebrations. Originated in Boston, these events contain many of the same things that we do for the Holiday Lights Festival, including skating, fireworks, ice sculpture and so forth.

Currently, Omaha’s festival has a distinctly kid-oriented approach, and I think we adults need something, too. Our city is ideal for multiple performances because our major arts venues are so centrally located. Lots of short performances can be going on simultaneously with shuttle services quickly connecting them all. Low cost performances would also give our arts organizations the opportunity to show off what they have planned for the New Year.

In fact, a lot of Omaha artists will cross the river to perform in Council Bluffs this year at that city’s First Night Festival. Bayliss Park, the Council Bluffs Public Library, City Hall, Community Hall, Courthouse, the U.P. Railroad Museum, the Y.M.C.A. and several churches will play host to a variety of performances continuously from 6 p.m. to the finale at midnight.

It would be nice if Omaha could join in for this kind of fun in the future.

Happy Holidays!