Early last December, Lily Jarmusz sketched a trio of shepherds pointing at a distant star as their sheep wandered nearby. She worked on her picture for several weeks, meticulously adding color and detail— including the words, “Keep Christ in Christmas” in loopy cursive — before entering it into the annual poster contest sponsored by the Knights of Columbus.
Several months later, Lily learned that the picture she’d worked so hard on had earned her international acclaim. Her carefully drawn Christmas scene took top honors in her age division at the international level of the Knights’ contest.
“I was really excited because I’d never won anything this big. I never thought I’d actually win this huge of an award,” recalled Lily, 12.
Knights’ poster contest engages young people
The Knights of Columbus, which is a global Catholic fraternal service organization, has been sponsoring the Keep Christ in Christmas poster contest for decades. The contest starts at the local level, where individual councils encourage youths to enter the contest and then choose local winners. The winners of those local contests go on to participate in district-level contests. Winners in those contests advance through regional and jurisdictional contests before being entered into the international contests.
Lily entered the local contest sponsored by the Knights’ St. John Fisher Council No. 3676 based at her parish, St. Jerome in East Rochester. The council has been sponsoring the poster contest for more than 10 years, according to Anthony DiTucci, who coordinates the contest for the St. John Fisher Council. The council had disbanded in the 1980s but was restarted around 2012, he said.
“When we restarted it, we knew the poster contest was one of the activities we wanted to do,” DiTucci explained. “We believe that it’s really important to engage with young people within the community and find ways to not only celebrate their faith, but have the Knights be associated with something that draws people closer to the church.”
The contest is open to children in kindergarten through eighth grade, and there are five different age-based divisions. The Knights reach out to young families in the parish and to Catholic-school students in the region to encourage youths to enter the contest, DiTucci said.
“It’s grown over time, but the last several years, we’ve had anywhere from 100 to 200 posters (entered) per year,” he said. “We have some fun evaluating them and celebrating the winners.”
Knights: Having an international winner is ‘mind-blowing’
While only the first-place winners advance to the next round of the contest, the Knights of the St. John Fisher Council also choose second- and third-place winners in each age division, and provide prizes — typically gift cards — to all three winners in each division.
“We’re trying to recognize people and have them feel excited. The more people who receive awards, the more likely we are to have future participation,” he said.
The Knights were surprised when they were notified about Lily’s success at the international level, DiTucci added.
“Winning at the international level is a whole different level of recognition and excitement. That literally means that Lily’s poster was picked as the first-place poster in her age group out of the entire world, which is kind of mind-blowing,” he said.
Contest winner loves to draw, create masterpieces
Lily and her mom, Rachel Jarmusz, were equally surprised to learn she’d won the international division. They were shopping in Buffalo when they received a phone call from DiTucci with the good news.
“I didn’t even know you could go to the national or international level,” Lily remarked, noting that she’s won at the local level in previous years, but she didn’t expect to win again, especially at such a high level. “I was really surprised and just kind of honored too.”
The Knights enlarged her poster and displayed it on an easel when they presented the award to Lily, who also was recognized after Mass at St. Jerome and during an assembly at St. John Bosco School, where she is entering seventh grade. Although recognition is nice, it’s not the reason Lily entered the contest, she said.
“I really like to participate because it’s really fun, and I’ve always just loved drawing and coloring because my mom is an artist. I love coloring with markers, just the way it all turns out and the way you can create a masterpiece,” Lily said.
Rachel Jarmusz said it is gratifying to see her daughter’s efforts recognized.
“It’s not all about winning, but she put a lot of work into her poster. And it’s a nice message,” she remarked.
Tags: Christmas, Monroe County East
