For many years, the Christmas Dinner has been a big event at Wellsville-Middletown Elementary School.

Every December, all of the students walk into a Christmas decorated gymnasium, enjoy a dinner with dessert and see Santa Claus.

“I think that’s like the highlight of our year,” said Malayna Carlisle, who works as a process coordinator at the W-M R-I School District. “We have already started talking about next year. It’s a special tradition.”

The tradition continued on Dec. 18 as students from kindergarten through fifth grade enjoyed a dinner that included ham, mashed potatoes, green beans and a roll and a gingerbread cookie for dessert and took pictures with Santa. The kitchen staff made 143 gingerbread cookies.

“It makes it worth it when the kids walk in and their eyes are just big and are looking around,” said Tara Calton, who is the school’s nurse. “Their little jaws drop. It makes you want to make it even better the following year so that every time they walk in, it’s a spectacular moment.”

Besides Carlisle and Calton, other staff members such as Jennifer Sommer, Katlyn Thull, Mary Jo Graves, Sherri Slovensky, Jenny Spiers, Julie Day and superintendent Tiffany Gosseen helped out with the event.

This year’s theme is Gingerbread Lane. It took eight hours for staff members to decorate the gymnasium.

“I think it’s the colors involved, trying to utilize some of the things that we have and we wanted to use the same colors,” Calton said. “We hadn’t done gingerbread and gingerbread came out hot last year and this year. It’s readily available and it’s easy to make. We figured with the cardboard, we could get a lot of gingerbread out of the cardboard.”

Both Carlisle and Calton participated in the Christmas dinner when they were students at the W-M school district years ago. Calton said the event brought back a lot of memories.

“I just spoke to a classmate who worked in the kitchen,” she said. “I found her standing in here looking around and I asked her, ‘Are you getting emotional?’ She said, ‘I kind of am because I remember being in elementary school. It’s a memory that I have whenever I walked in here back when we were little and going to school in Middletown. I forgot about it, but I remember them always making a big deal out of Christmas.’ I was like, ‘Well, that’s really cool.’”