BEST BET

The Halloween candy is barely eaten and the jack o’ lantern is still sagging on the front porch, but already the momentum is building for The Next Big Holiday.

Case in point: this week’s Pilgrim Festival in Claremont, featuring attractions ranging from turkey casserole and cotton candy to a Mayflower-on-wheels ride and a Massasoit Train, named after the Indian chief who helped the Pilgrims survive their first winter.

The festival, sponsored by the retired missionary community Pilgrim Place, will be open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Friday and Saturday, with puppet shows, a “glue-in” project for children, a craft fair with items handmade by Pilgrim Place residents and booths selling international collectors’ items brought home by the missionaries.

A buffet lunch, featuring turkey casserole and all the trimmings, will be served from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. both days. It costs $6 for adults and $3 for children.

A Pilgrim pageant, starring residents reenacting the Pilgrim story, will be presented at 1:45 p.m. both days.

There is no fee for admission to the festival, which will be held on the Pilgrim Place grounds at

Harrison and Berkeley avenues, two blocks west of Indian Hill Boulevard in Claremont.

Martha Frimand, a Pilgrim Place spokeswoman, said the Pilgrim theme is a natural for the community, which was established in 1915 by Congregationalists.

When the Pilgrims landed in the New World, Frimand said, they became the first religious settlers to establish the congregational form of worship, in which each church is governed by its own members rather than by a church hierarchy.

Pilgrim Place initially had about 100 residents, all of whom had worked at least 20 years as missionaries, ministers or teachers. Today, Frimand said, 325 retirees live in the 33-acre complex of small houses and apartments.

The festival, which the residents have put on for the past 42 years, benefits their health fund.

“Many of these people have outlived their money, because they did Christian work at a time when the pay was very low,” Frimand said.

Residents who need money for medical expenses can get help through the fund, she said.