Residents near San Marcos bundled up around the Hays County Historic Courthouse to celebrate a new local Christmas tradition.

Merry on the Squarey featured a holiday market, holiday activities, entertainment and many other festivities on Dec. 7 throughout downtown San Marcos. Garret Hope, downtown program director, said the goal for him was to get the community excited during the holidays.

“[Merry on the Squarey] is very community focused, but we know people love events, and we know people love to travel for events and getting people from other towns and cities,” Hope said.

Merry on the Squarey is a play on words developed by Steve Anderson, who works with Hope as the destination services coordinator at the San Marcos Convention and Visitor Bureau.

“I think it was an email, and I asked, ‘Hey we’re planning on doing this event and we’re looking for ideas for names,’ and [Merry on the Squarey] was one of them that came back,” Hope said. “We read it and laughed immediately, like laughed out loud. Then I told my crew about it and they laughed.”

Hope said he and his team aim to restructure some of their events, starting with Merry on the Squarey. As it was the first time holding the event, he has a few plans to expand it. According to Hope, there would be a movie that brought the community together during Halloween and Christmas, an aspect kept for Merry on the Squarey.

“In forms of growing the event, obviously more attendance with more people to come out and the biggest thing for us is we’d like to get many more businesses involved as possible,” Hope said.

13 locations hosted activities throughout the day. The Sweet Spot had free hot cocoa and photos with the grinch, Douglas Smith Soap Company had a peppermint bath bomb making class and Café on the Square allowed guests to participate in ornament making and decorating.

“I want this to eventually take over downtown, where downtown looks like this winter wonderland, one step at a time,” Hope said.

Alexandra Espinoza, animal science pre-vet freshman, appreciated how the event was efficiently moved into the venues around the square due to inclement weather.

“I love how they accommodated and moved everything from the outside to the indoors,” Espinoza said. “I know the rain kind of sucked, but it ended up being great.”

Her friend Prudence Mesquiti, digital media innovation freshman, said the event having different activities made it nice but wishes she arrived earlier.

“I would come back in the morning though when it starts because I feel like that’s when they start running out of stuff after the first two hours,” Mesquiti said.

Hope said he spent a lot of time with the planning and execution of the event. When explaining what he looks forward to the most, he wants to see people come out and enjoy it. When he was growing up, Hope’s parents took him out to Christmas events.

“What I used to see as a kid, I like to see that the kids get that same experience here in San Marcos,” Hope said.“I’m really excited to give families and locals something to do because sometimes you might hear that there’s nothing to do around here and hope we start a tradition.”

For more information on Merry on the Squarey, visit https://www.visitsanmarcos.com/downtown/things-to-do/events/merry-on-the-squarey/.