Didcot Christmas Street Fair would have been running for almost 30 consecutive years if it was not for the pandemic.

The 29th instalment of Didcot’s Christmas Street fair would have started last week, November 25, but the organisers decided not to go ahead with it as they felt it was too “risky to put on a major event like this.”

Jeanette Howse, from Didcot Events, explained that, as they need a year to plan the event, they settled on this decision as they did not know what the government was going to say about major events towards the end of the year.

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Oxford Mail: Picture by Ed NixPicture by Ed Nix

The fair usually attracts over 20,000 people, and with the uncertainty brought along with the Covid-19 pandemic, the Didcot Events team decided to keep their community safe.

Ms House said: “We felt it was too risky to put on a major event like this. We want our community to be safe. We don’t want to find out that because we held an event, there was a big outbreak in Didcot or the surrounding villages. It was a sensible decision to make.

“We think some people are disappointed at the fact that we haven’t had a street fair, but I do think they also understand our reasoning as for why we made this decision.”

 

Didcot Events have been doing events for 30 years; this year’s fair would have been number 29, making the 2022 fair number 30, but this would not be the case, as the fair was not able to take place in 2020 nor 2021.

Previously, the Didcot Events team, wrote a statement on their website to let people know that the fair was not going ahead this year.

Instead of the annual large-scale event, they organised two smaller events, the first one was at the Marriott at Milton Gate on November 21.

The second one, the Christmas Market on December 5, will take place this week in the Orchard Centre and Market Place.

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