{"id":14869,"date":"2025-12-30T13:46:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-30T20:46:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/cortez-community-christmas-dinner-serves-about-400-meals-on-christmas-day\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T21:45:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T03:45:08","slug":"cortez-community-christmas-dinner-serves-about-400-meals-on-christmas-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/cortez-community-christmas-dinner-serves-about-400-meals-on-christmas-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Cortez Community Christmas Dinner serves about 400 meals on Christmas Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Community
Community volunteers served around 400 meals to those who participated in this year\u2019s Cortez Community Christmas Dinner. (Mary Jo Standard\/Courtesy photo)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

The 32nd annual Cortez Community Christmas Dinner served about 400 meals on Christmas Day, highlighting the spirit of community and giving during the holiday season.<\/p>\n

The dinner was held from noon to 2 p.m. at the Montezuma County Annex and offered dine-in, takeout and delivery options for residents. Organizer Mary Jo Standard reported a joyful atmosphere as families and individuals shared the holiday meal.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s hard to put a name to the feeling sometimes, because when you walk in, it\u2019s this big, beautiful event where we have community members just sharing a meal, and the atmosphere when I came in was just so happy and joyful on Christmas Day,\u201d Standard told The Journal.<\/p>\n

The menu featured ham, mashed potatoes, green beans, rolls and pie, with all 50 donated pies gone by the end of the meal. Food was purchased by organizers after fundraising efforts, including $7,000 raised by one volunteer who went door-to-door.<\/p>\n

In the final minutes, volunteers sent guests home with extra to-go boxes, leaving only 10 to 15 meals.<\/p>\n

\"Volunteers
Volunteers served patrons of the Cortez Community Christmas Dinner on Christmas Day. (Mary Jo Standard\/Courtesy photo)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

About 80 meals were delivered to homes, including some to families.<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s dinner marked a transition, relying entirely on community volunteers after challenges that included the death of the longtime head chef and scheduling conflicts among traditional organizers.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was just this perfect storm of nobody can do this. So, it was a rallying of the community,\u201d Standard said.<\/p>\n

Randi Lewis and Tracy Whelesskonkel of Lunch Lady Catering handled the cooking, starting preparations at 4 a.m. Christmas morning.<\/p>\n

\u201cI could have gotten all the volunteers in the world, but it wouldn\u2019t have made a difference if nobody could cook. So, it was such a huge piece that they were willing to get up at 4 a.m. on Christmas morning and come cook for the community,\u201d Standard said.<\/p>\n

Further assistance came from Anne Miller of Grace\u2019s Kitchen and volunteers Tess Forth and Caitrin Smith, who helped with food prep, supplies and organizing deliveries.<\/p>\n

Standard praised the volunteers for stepping up and emphasized the strength of community involvement.<\/p>\n

\u201cI cannot reiterate enough how important I think it is that things like this are led by the community, as opposed to an organization, and there\u2019s so much power behind that for the community,\u201d Standard said.<\/p>\n

She added that helpers ranged from delivery drivers to cleanup crews, showing what community-led programs can accomplish.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Community-led event perseveres despite challenges<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14870,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[755,364,21,438,28,60,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-14869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-christmas","tag-community","tag-cortez","tag-food","tag-headlines","tag-montezuma-county","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14869"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14869\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19392,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14869\/revisions\/19392"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14869"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=14869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}