The Festival Will Go On

The Festival of Trees committee is still setting up for this year’s event, which will be held as a drive-thru experience at Mid-American Coaches on Highway 47 in Washington. The festival will be open every Saturday and Sunday in December before Christmas from 5 to 8 p.m. The only cost of admission is a non-perishable food item to donate to area food pantries. All photos by Jeanne Miller Wood.

Annual Christmas Tree Event
Will Be a Drive-Thru Experience

There’s a sense of excitement in Dottie Brinker’s voice as she talks about this year’s St. Peter’s Festival of Trees and how it will happen, and it’s not just because she’s grateful that it is able to happen at all. 

The COVID-19 pandemic has canceled a lot of things, including the Boy Scouts annual Scouting for Food to fill area food pantries, but the St. Peter’s United Church of Christ church council agreed to allow the annual festival to move forward if the committee could make it a drive-thru event that would allow for social distancing. Mid-American Coaches donated the venue — a three-bay bus storage facility at its campus along Highway 47 — so the committee had an opportunity to do something different, and Brinker is excited by the possibilities.

“We wanted to make this fun for the kids since so many Christmas things are not going to take place this year,” she said.

Dottie Brinker explains how the trees at this year’s festival will be grouped into themes.

Much of what people know about the festival will be the same — there will be dozens of Christmas trees, including around 40 specially decorated by the community; viewing will be available every Saturday and Sunday in December before Christmas; and the only cost of admission will be non-perishable food items that will be donated to area food pantries.

There will be some fun additions to the festival, such as holiday yard inflatables and an area decorated like Santa’s workshop with elves, a fireplace and Santa sitting in a rocking chair. 

Frosty and Friends

Sarah Barnett, who drew and designed many of the cartoon images that will be part of the festival, works on the fireplace that will be part of the Santa’s workshop area.

For the first time, the Festival trees will be grouped into themes: Frosty and Friends, “How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” “A Charlie Brown Christmas” and Rudolph and Friends, which each will include hand-drawn cartoon characters and poignant sayings from the corresponding Christmas movies. There also will be a replica of St. Peter’s UCC featuring a children’s choir that combines photos of church members’ heads attached to mannequins, and the finale will be a Nativity.  

A children’s choir featuring photos of Sunday school members will be “singing” in front of a replica of St. Peter’s UCC.

A moving image showing a team of reindeer pulling Santa’s sleigh will be projected on the wall behind the Rudolph and Friends tree group.

The committee is working on a way to add additional details with the use of projectors, and it is deciding the best way to include music.

“We are still working on how to put it together, getting it to look right and planning how to light everything,” Brinker said.

Access to enough electrical power has been a challenge, so the committee put out a request for people to loan them generators.

“We are trying to figure out how to make it fun for people and that there’s a lot to look at,” Brinker said.

The layout of the festival will be U-shaped, with the trees placed on the outside and Santa’s workshop area in the center. That will provide something for people to see out both sides of their car windows.

‘This Space Is Ideal’

Before the festival committee could begin formulating its plan to hold this year’s event, it needed a venue. Members considered several options, but none could have been more perfect than what Mid-American Coaches offered, Brinker said, noting some were completely outside, which would have limited the festival to just one day or one weekend, since the trees would have exposed to the elements.

“This space at Mid-American really is ideal,” she remarked, explaining it has allowed the committee to take its time with set up and staging, rather than rushing to get everything done between certain hours of the day.  

Committee member Sarah Barnett agreed.

“We really can’t speak highly enough of Mid-American for allowing us to use this space,” she said. “They’ve done so many things for us. They cleaned out and moved a lot of things so we could use it and they’ve allowed us to come and go as we need to.

Lloyd Bailie, general manager of Mid-American Coaches, said the company was eager to donate its facility for the event.

“We have participated in the festival in the past and have always enjoyed being part of it and seeing how much the community enjoys and supports the Festival of Trees,” Bailie said. “Mid-American, having deep roots here in the community and the county, believes in community service and continues to look for ways that we can help.

“It has been impressive to see how the committee works together to transform a bus garage into a drive-thru Christmas wonderland and a way to honor the birth of Jesus.”

“We here at Mid-American Coaches hope everyone will come out to see this awesome site,” Bailie remarked.

Purpose Is to Support Food Pantries

In years past, the festival has collected more than 13,000 items of food for the three Washington food pantries — St. Peter’s UCC, Loving Hearts Outreach and St. Francis Borgia. But this year, with a new location and the uncertainty of the pandemic, the committee doesn’t know what to expect in terms of the collection.

Because people will not be getting out of their cars to view the trees, their donated food items will be collected by volunteers in a socially-distanced manner. At this point, the committee isn’t exactly sure what that will look like yet. It could involve volunteers holding up laundry baskets and having people gently toss their food donation into the basket.

In addition to food items, the festival also accepts monetary donations, which will be split evenly between the three pantries, allowing them to purchase the food they most need.

In years past, the festival has collected more than 13,000 items of food for the three Washington food pantries — St. Peter’s UCC, Loving Hearts Outreach and St. Francis Borgia. Photo by Craig Vonder Haar of Washington School District.

If You Go . . .

The St. Peter’s Festival of Trees will be open the first three weekends in December, Saturday and Sunday, from 5 to 8 p.m. at Mid-American Coaches, 4530 Highway 47 in Washington. The Franklin County Sheriff’s Department will be helping direct traffic.

No reservations or tickets are needed to attend. Just show up, Brinker said. A lot of families like to drive around looking at all of the Christmas lights and displays at houses, and this is just another place to drive-thru and enjoy, she said.

There is no time limit for moving through the festival display. People can go as slowly as they like, and going slow is probably the best plan, Brinker said with a smile.