The Festival of Wreaths & Trees
With Music! in Mount Union
December 13, 14, & 15, 2024
Setup Thursday December 12, 2024
2024 Annual Letter
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The 2024 Festival of Wreaths & Trees in Mount Union

To: All organizations, families, individuals, and businesses

October 18, 2024

Greetings from Leslie and Christine Armagost!

Back in 1995, as part of the “Spirit of Christmas on Main Street” holiday events, the Mount Union Historical Society and the Mount Union Art Guild got together and, led by Elizabeth Goodman and Norm Wilson, organized a community display of Christmas trees. Since that first successful event, the Festival has evolved to include wonderful music, voting, prizes, wreaths, and more! There have been model railroad displays, figurine collections, crafts, and partridges in pear trees. We even survived a year when it was safer to not gather in person - by getting our website going. (Hopefully nothing like that will have to happen again any time soon!)

Every year, we’ve done our best to add to the community’s joy of the season. And here we are - about to have the 30th Annual Festival of Wreaths and Trees in Mount Union! What beautiful entries will we see for our Pearl Anniversary?

The Festival of Wreaths and Trees in Mount Union will be hosted at the Mount Union Presbyterian Church (corner of Shirley and N. Division Streets), over the second weekend of December, 2024:

Friday Dec. 13th: 10AM - 9PM Saturday Dec. 14th: 9AM - 4PM
        Sunday Dec. 15th: 12 - 3PM

(Bring your entries on Thursday Dec. 12th from 3-9PM or by arrangement; retrieve after 3PM Sunday.)

And yes, those hours mean we’ll be open a bit later than in the past - because as a special event, we’ll have a live Festival By Night! From 7-9PM Friday, we’ll lower the room lights and turn on any (battery) lights in our entries, so that visitors can take a little evening stroll by Christmas-light. We’ve enjoyed taking after-dark pictures in recent years, and thought others might like to share the experience.

We’re working on finalizing musical performances, and as we have for the past few years, we’ll have a few photo backdrops (we never knew they’d prove so popular!) and our I-Spy game tree. We hope to have our Community Wish Tree going again this year, too.

Is there anything you’d like to see at the Festival? Let us know!

Our Facebook group is “Festival of Wreaths and Trees in Mount Union” and our website is FestWreathsTreesMU.com. If the Festival location has to close after setup due to poor weather etc., it will still be online. We have display and voting for those who can’t make it in person, too!

Our categories will be: Wreaths, Trees, Youth Trees (for those under age 16), and Holiday Décor.  (Should there be enough Youth entries, we can sub-divide that category into “groups” and “individuals”.) Wreaths may be any variety of artificial, but may also be made of live greens. Trees must be artificial. Any lights must be battery-operated - but this year, we’re encouraging them!

The theme of your entry is up to you. Any kind of holiday display can be entered, from the joy and enthusiasm of small children’s art, to a display of personal memories, to an entirely handmade tree, to an artistic arrangement of store-bought ornaments. If your entry has personal meaning to you, or has notable features like antique ornaments, please let us know so that we can share that information with attendees.

If you want to decorate a tree but don’t have your own to bring, we have a variety of sizes and colors of trees for use. We have a range of 3’ to 7’ green, black, and white trees, our unusual straw-colored tree, and a wide range of colors of 2’ tree. Just ask, and we can let you know what we have available and reserve a tree for you if you’d like.

This year, we even have two new trees: one is a rustic natural-looking style, and the other is a beautiful 9ft tree donated by the awesome Elwood Reahm!

Any size tree can be used, from miniature to sparkly 2ft to… well, while we do have a small step ladder, 9ft is probably our upper limit. And as we know from Charlie Brown, even just one ornament can make a wonderful Christmas tree.

And finally, we’ll have a general Holiday Decor category. Want to show off your Decorated Stockings? Nativity Scenes? Ugly Christmas Sweaters? Vintage Santa Collections? This is the category for you! Handmade items encouraged (bought items should be modified or presented in a collection).

If you’re looking to sell your entry, let us know to label it that way, and we’ll collect payment for you. Note that if you’d like to sell ornaments right off your tree, make sure and leave us any extras so we can keep it stocked for best display.

And should you purchase a Festival entry that’s for sale, we ask that it be picked up on Sunday after 3pm (or that delivery arrangements for after the Festival be made) if at all possible, so that we can keep the display up until Festival closing.

Full Festival Guidelines are included with this letter, as well as being available on our Facebook group and website. We recommend pre-registration at FestWreathsTreesMU.com (or call or drop us a text at (719) 332-6975, or email FestWreathsTreesMU@gmail.com). But, if you don’t get to, that’s ok too.

Either way, bring your entry to the Presbyterian Church on Thursday the 12th, where we’ll be setting up from 3pm to 9pm. (We know how hard scheduling can be! If you call or text, we can arrange to accept your entry earlier in the week or earlier on Thursday, or before opening on Friday morning. Don’t hesitate to contact us - we’re happy to try to work it out!)

We can’t wait to see what this year’s Festival has in store!

The Festival of Wreaths and Trees in Mount Union is made possible by donations and participation from our community.  In addition, each year, to help spread Christmas cheer, we collect donations for a local organization. We’ve donated to the Huntingdon County Humane Society for the past few years, and would like to do so again.

So, if you have any Winter holiday items you’d like to donate for our sales table, just bring them on Thursday or Friday so we can set them out, and let us know if you’d like the proceeds to go to the Humane Society or to the Festival.

We are very grateful for the donations we have received already and in the past! The Festival could not happen without your help.  Thank you!

We would again like to extend our heartfelt thanks to Cathy and Norm Wilson, and the memory of Ish Goodman, for their years of work on the Festival. It’s thanks to you that our community has been able to come together and create some Christmas joy at the Festival for the past 30 years. Without your vision and dedication, it wouldn’t have happened at all, much less become an annual event.  Thank you!

And special thanks to the MU Historical Society, the MU Chamber of Commerce, the Juniata River Blueprint Community, and the MU Presbyterian Church, Gretchen Crouse and the Mount Union Area High School Music students, everyone who has entered wreaths and trees and other items into the Festival, and everyone who comes to help set up and take down, for their invaluable help.

This is an incomplete list of those to whom we owe thanks! So many others have helped with the Festival, even just over the past few years, since we’ve been at the helm. Even more helped in the years before that - wonderful people full of Christmas spirit that we don’t even know. The effect you had is still visible in the holiday joy that the Festival can bring about to this day.

We are so grateful and so glad to be able to help Mount Union celebrate! Without all of you, the Festival of Wreaths and Trees would not be possible.

We sincerely thank you all, and hope to see you at the Festival!

-Leslie Armagost -Christine Armagost