Creole Christmas in New Orleans: Festival Evolution Analysis
This paper reviews and discusses "The Evolution of a Festival: Creole Christmas in New Orleans" (1993) by Harsha E. Chacko and Jeffrey D. Schaffer. It examines the origins of the annual Creole Christmas event, launched in 1986 to boost tourism during New Orleans' December off-season, and summarizes the authors' main argument regarding stakeholder collaboration, heritage-based marketing, and annual evaluation practices. The paper also identifies key lessons the article offers about effective festival management, including community access, volunteer coordination, and economic impact assessment. It concludes that the event successfully transformed a slow season into a profitable and culturally significant period for the city.
- Introduction: Context and purpose of the paper
- Overview of the Creole Christmas Event: Origins and goals of the December festival
- Main Argument of the Article: Stakeholder collaboration and annual evaluation
- Lessons About the Nature of Events: Key practical lessons for festival management
- Conclusion: Synthesis of economic and cultural outcomes
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper follows a clear, logical structure — introducing the source, summarizing its content, extracting broader lessons, and then synthesizing findings in the conclusion.
- It correctly identifies a subtle tension in the source article: the "build it and they will come" framing understates the actual effort made by organizers and volunteers, and the paper draws attention to this critically.
- The use of a bulleted list to present the article's key practical findings makes the lessons easy to scan and reference, which is appropriate for a review-style paper.
Key academic technique demonstrated
This paper demonstrates source summarization with critical framing. Rather than simply paraphrasing the Chacko and Schaffer article, the writer identifies an implicit assumption in the authors' argument — the idea that Creole Christmas's success was inevitable — and positions it as a limitation. This shows the ability to read a source critically rather than accept it uncritically.
Structure breakdown
The paper is organized into four functional sections: a brief contextual introduction, a description of the event itself, a summary of the article's main argument, and an extraction of broader lessons about festival management. The conclusion synthesizes all three body sections, tying economic outcomes back to the strategic choices identified earlier. The structure is well-suited to a review or reflection paper at the undergraduate level.
Introduction
Although ravaged by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the "Big Easy" has recovered to become the destination of choice for millions of tourists each year, even during the city's off-season in December. To understand how the city achieved this success, this paper provides a summary of the article "The Evolution of a Festival: Creole Christmas in New Orleans" (1993) by Harsha E. Chacko and Jeffrey D. Schaffer. It includes a brief discussion of the event, a summary of the authors' main argument, and a discussion of what that argument reveals about the nature of events. Key research findings are presented in the conclusion.
Overview of the Creole Christmas Event
This article describes the annual Creole Christmas event held in New Orleans during a 20-day period each December — the city's traditional off-season for tourism. Created in 1986 in an effort to increase visitor numbers during this slow period, the event successfully achieved its organizers' primary goal of generating a positive economic impact on the city and its tourism industry. However, at the time of writing, Chacko and Schaffer conclude that Creole Christmas had not yet fully realized its potential cultural and social benefits.
References
Chacko, H. E., & Schaffer, J. D. (1993, December). The evolution of a festival: Creole Christmas in New Orleans. Tourism Management, 475–482.
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