The town of Hope will be kicking off the holiday season on Friday with its Christmas of Yesteryear on the town square.

Barb Johnson, director of the Yellow Trail Museum, said there will be caroling, carriage rides and events in the stores around the Town Square.

They Yellow Trail Museum itself will be offering activities including a bake sale and cookie baking for the children.

“Kids come in here and they decorate Christmas cookies for a dollar and their mothers love it because then they don’t have the decorating mess at home,” Johnson said. “They get to do it right here and leave us the mess.”

The event will feature carriage rides at a cost of $3 per person or $10 for a family of four. The carriage rides will stop at locations where local actors portray people from Hope’s past on Christmas eves throughout the ages.

“People meet at Norman’s cabin and get on a horsedrawn people-mover and visit, this year, nine different scenes where people are talking about Christmas eve in whatever era they are representing,” Johnson said. “It is an interesting trip back in time.”

Johnson said the event will feature a live Nativity at the bandstand at 6:30 and 7:30 p.m.

“At 7 p.m., the Baptist youth will do a program they call a ‘dowel-rod ministry,'” Johnson said. “It is sort of a almost dance routine where they use dowel rods to tell the Christmas story. It is a very interesting program, all done by the kids and practiced for weeks to get it perfect.”

The Christmas of Yesteryear is from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. Friday on the Hope Town Square.