Winter Lighting Celebration: Trees, Merriment, and More

Connection, December 9, 2024

By: Jed Donnel

On Sunday, kids from one to ninety-two congregated at the Mountain Campus to usher in the first annual SMS Holiday Tree Lighting Celebration. The festivity is the brain-child of Margi, and there is no better sage to remind us all of the true spirit of the holiday season. While the giant spruce tree, lit spectacularly from base to top, has welcomed passersby for several years now, Margi surmised that reinvigorating the symbolic importance of the tree was the perfect way to blend young and old, past and present, and thereby begin a new celebration that will become a yearly tradition. The tree itself has overseen the Mountain campus during many iterations since its planting by Lowell Whiteman in the late 1940’s, and it has quietly withstood fires, beetles, campus development, and the comings and goings of multiple generations. Now, towering 60 feet in the air, it represents the endurance of the school’s past and its ongoing hope for the future. As the old song says,“Your bright green leaves with festive cheer, Give hope and strength throughout the year.” The Tree Lighting Celebration therefore was an occasion to bring out the kid in everyone. Samantha kicked off the event with a welcome to the crowd around the bell, and Margi relit the old tree. Some 200 attendees then found their way to a variety of games and activities around campus: arts, crafts, and cookie decoration in the gym, sledding on the old ski hill next to a campfire, a snow maze on Lowell’s Lawn, a general dancing and prancing in the frozen air, and occasionally dashing inside for a jolt of hot cocoa or karaoke in the student center. Around dusk, and as the temperature plummeted, the kitchen staff treated us all to a hearty buffet of chili, cornbread, hotdogs, and salad in the dining hall. The din and merriment showcased a community warmed by each other’s company, a reaffirmation that old acquaintances should not be forgot, and festive tidings that the wisdom of an ancient tree resides in each of us, young and old.

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