A few weeks ago. A few weeks ago, unless you live in Arizona, or Hawaii, you set your clocks back.

I always seem to forget why we do that. But if nothing else, it feels like a way of crossing a threshold

into a coming season where the days are shorter and colder and where the atmosphere and

spirit are merrier and brighter. I enjoy that feeling so much that this past weekend,

I set my clocks back again. But this time, not by one hour, but by, oh, 170-odd years.

To a time when gentlemen wear top hats and

waistcoats and soot-covered chimney sweeps bustled through the streets and on the rooftops.

Yes, I've returned once again to a beloved Bay Area tradition, the Great Dickens Christmas Fair.

And, more impressively, it has returned to us.

This immersive experience that brings visitors back to Christmas Eve in Victorian London

started in 1970, and ran continuously until the early 90s, where it went dormant for some years

in search of a suitable home.

And by suitable, I mean a home that can accommodate a three-acre floor plan with multiple

theaters and dance floors, indoor parades, amusements and games, shopping, classic English

Christmas foods, and recreations of city streets, quaint shops, seedy docks, lavish tea rooms,

pubs, and dining halls. That suitable home is a place called the Cow Palace in

Daily City on the southern border of San Francisco. And the Great Dickens Christmas Fair,

or simply the Dickens Fair, as a lot of people call it, began a new run at the Cow Palace in 2000.

Where it has been now consistently, except for a small hiatus due to the plague. That's Kevin Patterson. He's the co-producer

of the Great Dickens Christmas Fair, and it was his parents who founded it back in 1970. And yes,

just like everything else in 2020, the Dickens Fair went dark due to the pandemic. And last year,

2021, Patterson and Company offered a modified version.

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