Charity Christmas Tree Festival 2012

On Wednesday 5^th December the boards came out of storage, 

.... were covered and moved into place .....

.... for the arrival of the Christmas trees later in the day. 

On Thursday 6^th December 

representatives from schools, organisations and charities came in to decorate the various trees. 

The same day the flower arrangers were in decorating the church.

On Friday 7^th December all the plugs and wires were sorted and linked ready for the opening and “switch on” later in the day.

About 5.30 p.m. the main doors were opened and people came into the church to be ready for the opening at 6.30 p.m.  At first there was a trickle but soon people were pouring in!

The church was buzzing, and so full of excited people that Clive struggled to get everyone’s attention before he could welcome them and introduce our vicar, Jeremy.   (Many visitors had to sit in the choir stalls as there was no room elsewhere!)

By the time Jeremy, welcomed everybody at 6.30 p.m. the church was absolutely packed.  It was standing room only and there was not much of that left either!

After Jeremy’s welcome, Clive introduced Wendy Cheetham (head teacher of Farnborough Road Infant School) who was to open the festival.  Before she did that however, she announced that some of the children had come along to sing for us.

At this point the children stood up and turned round to face the back of the church.  (It must have been quite intimidating to suddenly turn round to see the masses of people that had accumulated behind them!) Under the leadership of their teacher, Helen Pritchard, the children sang a variety of Christmas songs, modern and traditional, with great gusto! 

(I have said it before and I’ll say it again “There is nothing quite like infants at Christmas”!)

Once her children had finished Wendy gave us a quick glimpse of a “child’s eye” view of Christmas before Clive whipped everybody up into an enthusiastic count down to the “switch on” of the lights on the 34 trees in the body of the church. Then she pressed the button!

After the lights had been switched on many people moved on to the market next door as others took their seats for the next part of the programme of entertainment.  

This was the Farnborough Road Junior Singers accompanied and led by their teachers, Sue Barton  and Mandy Harrington.  

Their program began with a soloist singing the first verse of "Once in Royal David's City".

It continued with a diverse selection of Christmas songs, including carols, old and new .... .....interspersed with comic recitations. 

The final part of the evening’s entertainment was provided by The Octave Choir.  

It is not easy to follow two excellent children’s singing groups.  

However, this choir managed to do so magnificently.  As Clive put it as he introduced them – they may not be as young but he was sure that they were just as young at heart – and this they proved to be!  
Their finale was an assemblage of Christmas songs set to a variety of music written by Mozart.  The audience were encouraged to see (or should that be hear) how many different tunes they could identify.

The entertainment over, visitors were able to get a better look at the trees.

On Saturday 8^th December, the trees were lit and the church doors opened in time to welcome our first visitors at 10.00 a.m.  

From then on there was a steady stream of people coming through to admire the trees before going through to the Market and café.

33 of these trees represented different local and national charities.  As usual the trees were all sponsored by local businesses or individuals and decorated by representatives of the charities themselves or local schools or church organisations.  What had started out as almost identical trees now looked very different from each other - many typified their charity. 

Of the other two trees in the church one is the church tree under the East window and the other the Prayer & Remembrance Tree on which visitors were invited to hang their tributes and prayers.

Thank you to all the people who worked so hard to make the festival a success – the organisers, the sponsors, the charity representatives, those who performed for us and the many, many people who visited.  A particular “thank you” to Wendy Chetham for agreeing to open the Festival and, of course to John Feneley who spearheaded the whole project and worked so hard d to make it a success.  Without John our charity Christmas Tree Festival simply would not have happened.

Well done everybody!