Trees of Christmas returns

Fourteen years ago, Trees of Christmas would have been a regular annual event held in the Henry County Courthouse. However, following a fire in 2004 that ruined the decorations the Women's Club of that time used to adorn the event, the tradition was discontinued until this year when co-president of the Woman's Club - Sheila Allender - decided to revive it.

On Dec. 8 and 9, the Mt. Pleasant Courthouse filled three floors with 49 uniquely declared Christmas trees. They also had entertainment in the form of singing and Santa Claus.

Saturday alone they had 269 visitors, nearly double what they had been anticipating for that day. Over the weekend as a whole they had nearly 500 people through, as well as 292 food donations and raised over $500 to be donated to the Fellowship Cup.

Chris McCormick of the Pleasant Pickers, a club focused on finding vintage, lead her group in creating a Christmas tree for the event. The Pleasant Pickers are just one of dozens of local groups who decorated a tree for the event, a task that decorators had to arrive at 3 a.m. to begin for.

'We decided we wanted to finish the tree for the event, so we came up with a theme: A Cup of Tea for Christmas,” she said. 'We started collecting items for the tree about a month ago.”

The items they collected included cups, silverwear, doilies fashioned to look like angels and the like. Some of the members brought items that belonged to their families; McCormick herself included a spoon from her grandmother's tea set.

The Pleasant Pickers was one of just 49 trees the Court House hosted over the weekend. And of those 49, four were decorated by Allender, who coordinated the event.

'I have a passion for decorating, to be honest,” she said. 'I told myself, if I do one thing while I'm co-president [of the Women's Club] it's going to be to bring back Trees of Christmas.”

'The success of the event is due to working with a great committee and the dedication of the groups who volunteered to declare the trees,” she said. Due to the success of the event this year, residents should expect it to make a return come next December.