{"id":24260,"date":"2024-12-26T00:12:30","date_gmt":"2024-12-26T07:12:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/cortez-hosts-its-32nd-community-christmas-dinner\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T22:51:04","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:51:04","slug":"cortez-hosts-its-32nd-community-christmas-dinner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/cortez-hosts-its-32nd-community-christmas-dinner\/","title":{"rendered":"Cortez hosts its 32nd Community Christmas Dinner"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=c41af006-9ae6-5e5a-9074-c1af96dc81d1&amp;function=cover&amp;type=preview&amp;source=false&amp;width=2000\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" alt=\"Volunteers and community members at the Cortez Community Christmas dinner on Christmas Day. (Aaron Lewis\/Special to the Journal)\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption><span class=\"caption\">Volunteers and community members at the Cortez Community Christmas dinner on Christmas Day. (Aaron Lewis\/Special to the Journal)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n<p>On Christmas Day, the Montezuma County Annex Building in downtown Cortez hosted hundreds of people as they enjoyed a hearty holiday meal, together.<\/p>\n<p>Community members filled plates with ham, sweet potatoes, green beans, salad and pie, and gathered around long, rectangular tables dressed in green cloths and gold garland for the occasion.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis, to me, is what Christmas should look like,\u201d said Jennifer Essary, who\u2019s on the Community Christmas Dinner Committee. \u201cOne of the highlights from today was getting to watch our community come together in friendships and fellowship while sharing a meal.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Leading up to the big day, organizers expected to feed 500 people.<\/p>\n<p>Around 200 showed up to eat at the annex building, and another 150 meals were packaged to go.<\/p>\n<p><figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=7a0b375d-3c25-5ae4-b8ff-454f7777496e&amp;function=cover&amp;type=preview&amp;source=false&amp;width=2000\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" alt=\"The Montezuma County Annex Building welcomed roughly 200 community members on Christmas Day to share a hearty holiday meal. (Aaron Lewis\/Special to the Journal)\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption><span class=\"caption\">The Montezuma County Annex Building welcomed roughly 200 community members on Christmas Day to share a hearty holiday meal. (Aaron Lewis\/Special to the Journal)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=49b14c5c-199a-5371-a977-ba007d91ed57&amp;function=cover&amp;type=preview&amp;source=false&amp;width=2000\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" alt=\"Volunteers serve community members a free holiday meal on Christmas Day. (Aaron Lewis\/Special to the Journal)\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption><span class=\"caption\">Volunteers serve community members a free holiday meal on Christmas Day. (Aaron Lewis\/Special to the Journal)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><p>For those in the community who were unable to make it to the in-person meal from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., volunteers delivered a meal to them. Essary said they delivered 78 meals.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s \u201chard to say,\u201d the \u201cweather might have contributed to a bit smaller turnout than we had expected,\u201d though the white Christmas was undoubtedly dreamy.<\/p>\n<p>Essary underscored how she values and enjoys working with volunteers of \u201call ages and backgrounds.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis dinner would not be possible without the hard work and support of our community,\u201d said Essary. \u201cWe are blessed to live in an area that makes this event possible.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><!-- gallery:32e83aeb-7772-4e5d-8899-6d9348753658 --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>conditions might have slightly impacted turnout <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24261,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,28,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-24260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cortez","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24260","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=24260"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24260\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78460,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24260\/revisions\/78460"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24260"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=24260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}