Community Fair: On local, loveable Christmas Markets

Ah, local craft fairs, the anti-Temu. It speaks to the power of doing things irl when a simple community hall, function room or gymnasium becomes a bustling bazaar, creators eager to share their wares with the world. Throw some stalls together in December, you’ve got yourself a Christmas market. The Princes Street Gardens Winter Wonderland may have Instagrammable aesthetics and noisy rollercoasters, but you can find creativity, community and collaboration anywhere there’s independent artists looking to make their living face-to-face.

A nostalgic itch was scratched when I attended a winter fair fundraiser thrown by Queer Voices Glasgow, a Southside-based LGBT+ community choir, my first December in Glasgow. Cloistered from the cold in Govanhill Parish Church, it was the busy-but-intimate fete I was familiar with; creators and customers catching up, prams pushed between the stalls. But beside the usual craft fair fare – candies and crocheted goods, decoration-making for the kids, cups of tea on the go – there were also hand-stitched Tom of Finland throw cushions. Those were tempting, but I only had a few stocking fillers left to get, and my mum probably appreciated the earthenware-style mug I got instead. 

My partner and I had portraits done by a cartoonist they hadn’t seen since their art school days together. We sat down more for the chat, but the drawings still hang in our living room. However amusing people found the phallic candles on sale, the choir’s singalongs reminded us all of the true meaning of Christmas – Wham!

It’s a laboursome, lonely time of year, made more bitter by scrolling online, slack-jawed at shipping fees, denying cookies on every website you browse. Shopping can be just as much of a gift for yourself, and the artists, if you find any of the many Christmas fairs popping up around Scotland this December. They’ve got the kind of cookies you don’t want to turn down.

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instagram: @queervoices.glasgow