Mark your calendars: our annual Christmas Coloring Contest returns for its third year in next week’s Franklin County Times.

One of the best parts of the holiday season is the traditions we observe. Whether it’s a neighborhood light show, a community Christmas parade, an ornament or cookie swap or a certain opportunity to help someone in need, there’s something comforting about knowing you’ll have the same things to look forward to year after year.

One of those traditions is the FCT’s coloring contest.

The newspaper launched the competition in 2020, when holiday traditions were taking a back seat to COVID-19 precautions. Most everything we usually enjoyed was canceled, from parades to performances and more.

Thankfully, all that seems to be mostly behind us, but the coloring contest is back.

We know from experience that Franklin County children love a good contest. Whether it’s a Farm-City essay, a 4-H poster, a rocket launch or a fundraising challenge, local youth are always all in when it comes time to compete.

Next week will be the first for this year’s coloring page, and a different coloring scene will appear each week through Dec. 14, giving children through age 12 four chances to show off their artistic skills and enter to win a cool prize. Bonus! This year EVERY entrant will receive a free box of crayons and coloring book. Additionally, we’ll have a special prize for the teacher who has the most participants from his or her classroom.

A whole slate of sponsors help us make this contest possible for the community each year, and they have our gratitude. We hope you will show them your thanks, too, by patronizing their businesses this season and in the year to come.

Be sure the children in your life check out the coloring page each week as “the holidays” begin in earnest. Have multiple young artists in your household? We’ll have plenty of extra copies of the paper at our office in downtown Russellville as well as in paper boxes throughout the county. There’s no purchase necessary for children to enter.

Let’s get coloring!