Bizarre Bazaar

The church bazaar is done and dusted for another year.  I have finally written up my notes and put the tea-room bucket away.

I have been the poor cow in charge convener of the tea-room for a few years  and I am done with it.  I spend the 2 weeks prior fretting over whether I have enough people to help, whether I have planned enough food, whether the food I have asked for will actually appear on the day.  I didn't get a dozen muffins as promised so I had to buy some from the bake table.  I had enough people to help most of the time but it seemed every time I needed something done, tea made, sandwiches brought out, no one was around.  I had 2 young women (20 and 17) who were so intimidated by mental arithmetic that both of them panicked and refused when asked to do cash.  I'm not kidding. 

These bazaars are an odd thing.  I have come to realize that, in this town anyway, only the old mainline churches still have a Christmas bazaar.  The Baptists or the Pentecostals don't have bazaars.  Why is this?  It is a major fund-raiser for our congregation; maybe the others don't need to do a bazaar to raise the kind of money that we do.

Or maybe they don't have the human resources to put on a bazaar.  We don't either really, but we struggle on year after year with the same little old ladies doing way more work than they should be but are too stubborn? proud? dutiful? faithful? who knows to pack it in. I'm one of the younger ones being on the wrong side of 45 and there is no one coming up behind me to take over.

But the fact that we raise so much money in one day is the reason why we continue year after year after year.  We've become too dependent on the thousands of dollars raised to give it up or scale it down.  It won't come to an end until all those little old ladies are dead and with Jesus.  I'm not really kidding either. 

You could argue that the Church Bazaar is old-fashioned and out-dated.  But judging from the crowds that flock to our doors, and line up, line up! I say to get in, people love them enough to drag their carcasses out on a shitty rainy Saturday to go to them.  If things work out for them, there will be 3 or 4 on at the same time in the neighbourhood (the other Presbyterian church across the street, the Anglican church down the street and another Presbyterian church a few blocks away) and people do the circuit.  I used to think that one took away from the others but apparently, people will come out for 3 but not for just 1. That's bizarre.

The tea-room sold out before noon which was a good thing. That means we can clean up early.  Our menu is muffins, sandwiches and a cheesecake-y thing.  The idea is that people who are there first thing, you know, lining up at 8 :30, have a muffin and a coffee and people who come later in the morning have a sandwich. Sometimes the women drop their husbands off in the tea-room, go do their shopping and come back to pick the poor bugger up and maybe have a cup of tea.  But do you want to know something really bizarre?  People will eat sandwiches at 9:30 in the morning!  Sweet Jesus, our first two customers wanted sandwiches!  I think that's just mental to want an egg salad sandwich at that time of the day, but hey, 3 bucks is 3 bucks so I'll take their money and get them a fucking sandwich.

So it's over for another year.  Shh, don't tell anyone, but I'm packing it in.  It's someone else's turn to sell sandwiches for breakfast.