Reasons why this isn’t your average church festival

This is not your average church festival.

The St. Helen Spring Festival in Riverside is now is its 64th year. That’s pretty remarkable considering how some longstanding Catholic church festivals have come to an end in recent years. Immaculate Conception ended 59 years of festivals in 2014, with Ascension’s also coming to an end after more than 30 years in 2015.

This year’s event, running June 9-11, has some of the familiar attractions that bring generations of people back year after year. But there are also a few things that make it pretty special.

If you’ve never been, or haven’t been in a while, here are some great reasons to break that streak this year:

THE FOOD

Let’s face it: this is the real reason most of us hit festivals, and St. Helen’s is notorious for its delicious food at reasonable prices.

The kitchen offers several delicious options, but the cabbage rolls are the stars of the show.

“We’re known for our cabbage rolls. We’ve always had them,” Marketing and Publicity Co-Chair Colleen Kirby said. “We make our cabbage rolls in-house every year from scratch. They are amazing.”

Holy Smokes BBQ returns to the event for its second year as well. Meanwhile, the bake sale inside the school features pastries of virtually every variety.

THE BANDS

St. Helen Spring Festival organizers have always worked to provide a multitude of musicians to please the crowds over the years. However, for 2017 they decided to make sure there was music going on somewhere in the festival at almost any time of day.

“I know we’ve been kind of steering over the years to up our live entertainment. I think this is the first year we’ll have either a band on the front lawn or our beer garden all day,” Westerfield said.