JACKSON – You couldn’t have asked for a more perfect December day for a town Christmas tree lighting.
Mild temperatures, no wind and the morning fog had long faded away by the time that singers, costumed characters and a whole lot of families filled the parking lot of town hall. Jackson was lucky considering some Christmas tree lightings – like Manchester’s – were rained out the night before.
Mayor Michael Reina couldn’t have been happier. He noted that his annual program to collect letters to Santa was complete. There was a special crimson painted mailbox marked “Letters for Santa” which was placed by the outside stage area.
“This is a perfect day for this,” the mayor said.
He was greeting residents near Olaf the snowman, a character from the popular Disney animated film “Frozen” who came for the occasion. Rudolph, that popular red nosed reindeer also greeted children and adults in the parking lot awaiting the start of the festivities.
This marked the first year for the township’s new Recreation Director Anthony Horta and his assistant Casey Wolfe to take charge of this community event which included students from the Jackson Liberty High School Choir and the Jackson Baptist Church Choir who provided some holiday tunes for the occasion before and after the arrival of a certain red suited, white bearded visitor from the North Pole.
Horta said, “I took over at the end of August. I want to thank the cooperation of public works for helping me to get everything together.”
“We’re in the mid-60s for the temperature. My assistant and I are here from the Recreation Department and we have several township employees as well, some of whom are in costume,” he added.
While Horta was outside looking over the wiring and layout for the staging area, Wolfe was inside helping a member of the Jackson Baptist Church Choir with a sound check as that choir would be performing in the court room chambers.
Township employees were trying on their costumes and setting up tables of free giveaways including Santa caps, special glitter lights and cups for hot chocolate.
The stage itself served to showcase the choirs and also featured the large light switch panel that was built by members of the Department of Public Works several years ago and is used to light up the large Christmas tree.
There were over 1,000 lights on the tree according to Chris Lenahan an employee of Christmas Décor in Wall Township whose staff were busy putting up the lights in the morning. “I think we started doing it here in Jackson for the tree last year. We have purple, green, orange and red lights and there is a star on top. It is going to look really nice when it is lit up.”
