Christmas festival won’t have reindeer after complaints

REINDEER will not be at this year’s Henley Christmas Festival following hundreds of complaints submitted to the town council.

Emails from people concerned with the animals’ welfare have persuaded the council not to have the deer this year but Mayor Kellie Hinton has suggested that the issue could be reconsidered for next year.

In previous years, the reindeer have been situated in a pen at the end of Friday Street for people to see and stroke during the festival and late-night shopping event.

The animals have also been used to lead the children’s lantern parade from the River & Rowing Museum.

Speaking at a meeting of the council’s events sub-committee, Councillor Hinton said the council should consider having the animals back in future.

She said: “A resident came up to me as I was walking to this meeting and said she was really angry about the reindeer. I said, ‘Oh, it’s okay, we are not having reindeer, it’s fine’. She said, ‘No, I want them. It’s the only time I’ve ever seen the reindeer. I just think that you’re crazy to stop having the reindeer over a few people moaning’.

“She was really quite vocal about it. I know that we get lots of copy and paste letters from animal rights campaigners but we’re not using any reindeer this year.

“I actually quite like the petting zoos. There was one at the Regatta for the Disabled and it was absolutely fantastic being able to pet the animals.”

The festival will take place on the evening of Friday, November 24 when most of the roads will be closed and many retailers will open late. There will be stalls and carnival rides in Market Place and surrounding streets. The layout will be like last year with the bottom of Market Place left clear to avoid a bottleneck outside Gabriel Machin, as has happened in previous years.

The meeting heard that the council had received £26,000 in sponsorship by local businesses towards the event.

Town centre manager Paul Carey said this generosity would ensure the festival was a “good centrepiece” and “starting point for a great Christmas”.

He said: “We have three or four kinds of tiers of sponsorship. We have the headline sponsors who are those who have pledged the most. They will be represented with their branding around the Christmas tree, much like Invesco has done in previous years.

“Invesco is still supporting us and we’ll be having banners on the town hall much like the literary festival one, which looked great.”

Entertainers will perform on a stage outside the town hall. These will include youth groups, stars of the Kenton Theatre’s pantomime Jack and the Beanstalk and a snippet of the Henley Amateur Operatic and Dramatic Society’s production of Backstage Aladdin.

At 7pm the Christmas tree lights will be turned on.

Mr Carey said that the charitable donations made this year will go to the Chiltern Centre and former mayor Sarah Miller’s chosen charities, the Henley Community Hub and the Henley branch of Parkinson’s UK.

Cllr Hinton stressed that traders attending the event were banned from using single-use plastics and diesel generators.

She said: “I feel like we need to have somebody, probably a member of the town council team, checking on the generators because last year we brought in a rule about generators and they weren’t stuck to.

“This year we’ve been really firm and said that if you turn up and you are going against our policy, you won’t be able to have a stall.”