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.
Main Argument of the Article
Recognizing the benefits of staging a city-wide Christmas celebration during the off-season, stakeholders from across New Orleans came together to make this event a reality. The festival grew in size and scope each year with a minimum of official oversight and public funding. To their credit, event organizers were also scrupulous in their attention to detail, evaluating the effectiveness of the event's performance each year to identify opportunities for future improvement. This commitment to ongoing assessment is central to the article's argument about what makes a community festival sustainable.
Lessons About the Nature of Events
There is an overarching theme of "build it and they will come" running through the Chacko and Schaffer article — a framing that suggests success for Creole Christmas was a foregone conclusion. In reality, however, the event's success was largely attributable to the sustained hard work of its organizers and volunteers. Despite this limitation in the article's framing, several salient and practical findings emerged:
Conclusion
The research showed that Creole Christmas is staged in New Orleans during a 20-day period each December. The event has transformed a lackluster off-season for the city into a profitable period that has experienced consistent year-to-year growth. Despite the challenges inherent in promoting any tourist destination during its off-season, the event organizers successfully leveraged New Orleans' unique cultural attributes into a celebration that highlights the best of the city while generating millions of dollars in revenue.
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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