MARINE CITY - Merchants and community leaders are planning a celebration of the holiday season, because it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas in Marine City.
Merrytime Christmas — the name is a pun on "maritime" — is 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Saturday.
"It’s a citywide event," said Erika DeLange, executive director of the Marine City Chamber of Commerce. "It’s an old-style Christmas in Marine City."
She said stores will have specials throughout the day. The event also will include wagon rides, live ice-carving demonstrations at Drake Park and carolers.
"The Marine City football team will be singing in the streets," DeLange said.
The Coach Mike Miller Christmas Run will be at 9 a.m. The event features a 5K run and a 1-mile walk or run.
Santa Claus will be at the Mariner Theater from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.
A Christmas craft show is 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Marine City Lions Club, 545 Ward St.
The first 500 adult visitors who stop at the The Lazy Llama, 214 Broadway St., will receive goody bags, DeLange said.
"It’s just a great old-time Christmas feeling in Marine City," she said.
"Christmas Story: The Musical," will be at 7:30 p.m. at the Riverbank Theatre, 358 S. Water St.
DeLange said the city still is feeling the effects of the closing of the Bluewater Ferry, which ran between Marine City and Sombra, Ontario.
The ferry has been shut down since January after ice damaged the causeway leading to the ferry dock in Sombra.
"I think it depends on who you talk to," DeLange said. "Some businesses have really felt the pinch.
"In the summer, we still were really busy. Had the ferry been running, it would have been double.
"Now that it is colder out we’re starting to feel it," she said. "We're not getting those summer tourists that come to town."