The Tom Daniel Annual Holiday Chili Cook Off has been canceled for the first time in its history due to the pandemic, but the president of the Downtown Association of Hot Springs said Friday that the annual holiday light display will still take place as planned.
The cook-off is named in honor of Daniel, one of its founders and a longtime civic and business leader in Hot Springs who died in 2016. The first chili cook-off was held on Nov. 25, 2003.
The cook-off typically funds the downtown holiday light displays, but thanks to a $5,000 donation from the Arvest Bank Foundation, more than 1 million lights will still illuminate downtown this holiday season.
"Arvest is honored to sponsor this year's holiday lights display, a seasonal addition to an already gorgeous part of town," Arvest Community Bank President Franklin Bass told The Greater Hot Springs Chamber of Commerce in an email.
"The chili cook-off is always a local hit, but we are happy to step in right now and make sure that this classic Hot Springs attraction still happens," Bass said.
Typically held the Monday before Thanksgiving Day, Cole McCaskill, the association's president and the Chamber of Commerce's vice president of economic development, said after considering the alternatives to spreading out the chili cook-off, they ultimately decided "nothing just really made sense."
"Given all the issues surrounding the pandemic, serving food to the masses and having a lot of folks together in one area just wasn't going to be a good idea this year," McCaskill said.
Typically, the lighting of all the downtown holiday light displays coincides with the chili cook-off, but McCaskill said despite the canceling of the event, there will still be a livestream lighting on Nov. 23 available online. He noted there will be local celebrities, as well as Santa Claus, to help them flip the switch to the displays.
"We still wanted to celebrate the downtown lights because it's a big attraction, brings a lot of folks downtown. We want people to come enjoy the lights even though we can't have the chili cook-off," he said. "And those lights will be up, I think, through the second week of January, so lots of times for people to come and enjoy those lights."