BH Christmas Photo Album merges faith, family, community
With the 2024 Bargain Hunter Christmas Photo Album on the horizon, the newest addition to what has become a pictorial scrapbook of Holmes County for the past 45 years gives people a chance to put a name with a face.
When it comes to celebrating the true meaning of Christmas, there are certain things that are central to a season of peace, joy, hope and love.
Three things at the heart of the Christmas season are faith, family and community, and one local collection of work has perfectly encompassed all three of those things for nearly five decades.
Over that time the annual Holmes Bargain Hunter Christmas Photo Album has been Abe and Fran Mast’s Christmas card, thank you card and love letter to the community they call home.
The album has featured photos of business owners, employees, and even children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, creating a historical marker each year that chronicles Holmes County’s business community and its growth.
Its pages feature family, friends and business people who have expressed their gratitude to the community while at the same time professing the importance of their faith as they celebrate Christmas.
The photo album has brought people together, put names to faces and reminded all of the incredible value of community, loyalty and faith and what each means to the people of Holmes County.
“It was one way we could share our faith through our business and express our appreciation to the people who blessed us and supported us,” said Fran Mast, who was inspired to develop the piece. “We wanted to create something that was better than simply putting Christmas art in an ad like others were doing, and we were hoping that people would feel the same way we did about sharing their faith and putting a more personal touch on thanking the community.”
Fran Mast said after developing the photo album, they would travel to various newspaper conventions and share the idea, and few others would attempt to duplicate it because it was such an enormous undertaking.
However, for the Masts, it was much more than a job; it was deeply meaningful, tying together community, business and faith.
“Other publishers were amazed at how we could put it all together,” Abe Mast said. “It’s a remarkable amount of work, but it was always worth it knowing what it means and represents.”
The origin of the photo album was as simple as it was sincere.
The year prior to the first official Holmes Bargain Hunter Christmas Photo Album in 1977, an advertisement ran at Christmastime featuring Ferrel Knotts, owner of Der Candlemaker in Walnut Creek.
The ad featured Knotts showcasing one of his many beautiful candles. It was a simple yet elegant photo that mesmerized Fran Mast to the point she was stirred into action, creating what has become an annual photo album — almost a type of community yearbook — that celebrates community and faith.
Fran Mast said her hope was the photo album wouldn’t be filled with lots of thank-yous and verbiage but instead would be filled with photos of the people who live, work and serve together throughout Holmes County.
Knotts and his elegant photo was the perfect place to start.
“I saw that picture, and it was so soft and peaceful,” Fran Mast said. “I asked him if we could put it in an ad, and he agreed, and we made a Christmas greeting out of it. Then it occurred to me: ‘Why can’t we do that for everybody? Wouldn’t that make it much more personal and meaningful to people?’ And that’s where it all began.”
The Christmas album became an instant community favorite, painting a pictorial tapestry that not only draws together the business community and the people who are at the heart of Holmes County’s success, but also served as a way for these businesses to share their faith, a theme important to so many.
Since that first issue came out, thousands of businesses have been featured in the pages of the album, creating a scrapbook of Holmes County’s business landscape that has seen businesses like Millersburg Tire Service, area banks and doctors’ offices, Beechy’s Inc., Walnut Hills, and others express their gratitude, share their faith and come together as a community.
For those who have been involved with the photo album since its inception, it has provided them with an opportunity to look back at the growth of their business and see how people have changed over the years.
“Fran has always been creative, and this was one of her finest ideas,” Abe Mast said. “It’s something that readers value and look for with great anticipation.”
At the time the Masts created the photo album in 1977, there really wasn’t anything else like it.
That remains true today.
While it has changed in many ways, the photo album’s simple yet profound focus on faith, family and community remains intact.
“There are a lot of businesses still around and others that aren’t, but there is something about the Holmes County culture and community that has maintained this entrepreneurial spirit so steeped in faith,” said Clint Alguire, director of sales and marketing at AloNovus Inc. “Faith continues to be such an integral part of that, and this photo album inspires us to celebrate it each year.”
The spirit and sense of unity is exactly what the Masts envisioned in creating a beloved piece that has provided a personal community touch on celebrating the Christmas season in a lasting way.
As we call on area businesses to participate in this season’s photo album, we felt the need to go back to its beginning, a reminder that it wasn’t created simply as a business opportunity — it’s an opportunity to show friends, neighbors and customers how much they mean to you.
To make sure your business is part of the 2024 Photo Album, call or email Alyssa Wallen at 330-432-5169 or photoalbum@alonovus.com. Wallen will be out and about in the community making sure everyone can be a part of this year’s celebration.