A Bay City Christmas

By Grease Coakes

Every year in Second life just like real life people get into the Christmas spirit, and Bay City is no exception. On December 8^th they held a Christmas party. From 1-4 PM there was an auction featuring incredible items for sale to benefit “Childs Play” the charity that buys children in hospitals video game systems so they have something fun to do. You can find more at http://www.childsplaycharity.org/ to bid on item all you had to do was pay a board and outbid the previous bid.

One of the featured items was a bomber plane from the 1940’s. Someone had a bid for 1,500L. By the design and detail of the plane they were getting a bargain the plane looked very realistic and fun to play with. The party was a huge success with popularity with over 40 avatars on the sim the Bay City sim crashed at least twice. The sim seemed very laggy, and at one point crashed. However that didn’t dampen the spirit of Christmas and the party. There were also fur coats and whole forests up for bid for Childsplay.

At the start of the event Gospeed Racer was playing Christmas music like “Twelve days of Christmas” by the Muppets and Alvin and the chipmunks music for the holiday season for children of all ages to listen to. By clicking one of the landmark giving prims you got a free pair of skates to skate around on an ice rink where the Christmas tree was. I tried it for a little bit watching my foxy avatar skate around.

Later on Grace McDonough a live singer sang for the party. Her voice was soft and graceful just like her name singing excellent Christmas music. Bluemonk Rau a singer from Gspot came on and sang after her singing live with a piano with a country folk voice he was very entertaining.

Around 3pm SL time they lit up the Christmas tree and it began snowing. Marianne McCann wearing a child avatar told me she did the set up and her buddy Kriss Kehmann made the tree himself for the event. He’s a tree builder/seller in SL. Kriss also made the mesh trees around the sim.

Gemma Cleanslate my friend and co-worker thought she saw a Linden Derrick Linden hang around the event. She may be right I remember seeing a blue dot on my mini map. Lindens show up as blue dots on mini maps. I was upset I missed seeing him I could have asked for his Linden bear Aargh!

All in all it was a fun event and the Bay City greeters did a wonderful job greeting people through the event.  The sim crash did knock people offline, but they relogged and came back. One thing this party made me think of was the Christmas season is commercialized with buying toys on TV and stressing yourself out buying gifts for your friends and family. I think what this event symbolized that it’s also about having a good time and to support those who are less fortunate then yourself. Enjoy the Christmas season with your loved ones and more and don’t get bogged down. There’s more to the season then getting gifts.

Grease Coakes