Festival of Trees
After a three-year hiatus due to the pandemic, our boys’ music group at the community music school returned to play a concert in the neighboring town’s Festival of Trees this holiday. The Festival of Trees is a fundraising event hosted by the town’s Boys and Girls Club and this year is their 22nd Annual event. Local businesses decorate and donate a Christmas tree along with the treats and prizes for the event. Festival goers pay a nominal entrance fee to attend and browse the beautiful Christmas trees. With the additional purchase of raffle tickets, the attendees have a chance to win their favorite tree and other treats and prizes. Each year, the event commences on the Friday after Thanksgiving and lasts three weeks. If you love Christmas trees, this is your event!
Each year we have participated, we invite friends to join and support this enjoyable, family-friendly event. This year, two of our friends came. They graciously watched our kids playing in the concert and then we had fun selecting which trees deserved our raffle tickets. We even had our pictures taken with Santa and his sleigh.
Another friend was not able to attend, but requested we purchase raffle tickets on her behalf and choose the trees she would like. Fast forward to the last day of the festival: much to our surprise, the friend who had not attended the festival was the only winner among us. We were all ecstatic about the win and our imaginations ran wild thinking about which splendid tree she had won. We even jokingly demanded that she share the prize.
Well, as it turned out, the tree she won was a very small tree decorated with tiny socks and a few gift cards. Nothing to write home about. None of us even remembered putting the raffle tickets in for this particular tree, so then the blame game began. “Who put the raffle tickets in for this tree?,” our friend questioned. We each accused the other of picking the tree. No one even remembered seeing this tree at the festival, let alone selecting it. Throughout that week, our friend’s husband would occasionally mutter about which of the friends chose this tree, what’s up with the tiny socks, and whether this was a prank.
We will chuckle about our Festival of Trees mystery for years to come.
