For a night most hats would have been hard to keep on, hats off to all public safety members who were out in the Monday-Tuesday storm. Strong rain bands, stronger winds and the added challenge of darkness were rough conditions to work in, closing roads and otherwise handling the storm’s tear through Midcoast towns.

Hats off to Lucia Droby, Wiscasset Area Chamber of Commerce and Wiscasset Creative Alliance for assembling a 2020 installment of Wiscasset Holiday Marketfest. Organizers have rightly shelved some aspects of the annual event until a better year, and adapted the rest to COVID-19 rules. Now shoppers during the Dec. 4-6 event just need to do their part to keep one another, and one another’s families, safe in the pandemic’s national and regional surge. They have done it before, at last month’s Early Bird and this year’s answer to the sidelined Wiscasset Art Walk, Walk Around Wiscasset.

And a tall, red and white striped hat off to the Heidi and Barrett Fuller family of Edgecomb, with that Whoville display our Bill Pearson reports on this week. If ever we needed assurance Christmas and other holidays will come, in whatever form they can, retaining the message of peace and good will with or without some of the ribbons and more, 2020 is it.

Thank you, Fullers, and all who are helping make this strange holiday season still the holiday season.