Your questions answered…
I am interested in holding a Christmas Tree Festival in 2020 at the church at which I volunteer. I used to attend them with my grandparents as a child and loved it and there don’t seem many local anymore. I figured why not have a go?! Your website has proved really helpful as I try to put together my pitch to convince the church management to allow me to start the planning, but I have a couple of questions.
How do you go about organising the lighting in a manner that is safe? We would be putting the trees on boarding atop the pews and have various power points, but it is a Victorian church and they are a fair way from the pews. I presume you cannot ‘daisy chain’ 4-ways. This is a stumbling block for me at the moment.
How much is recommended to charge for a pitch? I am planning on raising funds to buy supplies and children’s gifts for our local foodbank which this charge would go towards. I am concerned about pricing ourselves out of people’s interest.
Is there a planning resource available beyond the information provided on your website? I would like to get all the information I can prior to bringing the possibility up with the church management.
Regards,
Nicki
Christmas Tree Festivals are a great way to bring the community together at Christmas and they give a lot of pleasure to visitors of all ages. They can also raise a lot of money but they are also a lot of work so doing your research is a great way to get started. I hope the following helps.
Lighting at a Christmas Tree Festival
At Stowmarket Christmas Tree Festival we recommend LED lights on each tree. We have trees on boards on top of some of the pews as well as trees standing on the floor. Each set of tree lights is plugged into a socket extension which takes the lights from each group of trees and these then are plugged into the sockets in the walls around the church. The leads on each tree are hidden with either a tree skirt, a piece of material or a scarf around the base. Depending on the theme of the tree there could also be some straw or tinsel or something else. The extension leads feed into the nearby sockets but there is one area where we have to have a lead trailing across the stone floor between the choir stalls. This is then taped to the floor with black and yellow tape so it isn’t a trip hazard. Because of the low voltage of the lights there isn’t a risk of overloading the plugs.
Various people think that the tree lights use a lot of electricity but in reality they don’t use much at all, especially if they are LED lights. It is heating the church that is our biggest cost but we think giving visitors a warm welcome is worth every penny.
Battery lights are another option that might work for smaller Festivals or ones that last a weekend. These would save trailing leads but in Stowmarket we now don’t allow them as they don’t last the duration of our Christmas Tree Festival — November to January and the decorators didn’t keep coming back to replace the batteries after they had run out. With battery lights it means someone has to go round to each tree to switch the lights on each time which can cause problems if it is various different people who don’t know where the switches are so they have to ‘look’ for it with each tree.
We are blessed to have a couple of electricians in the congregation and they take care of the lights and the electrics. They come in early on during the setting-up process and put the extension leads in place, which makes it easier for them to plug the lights in when all the trees are decorated. We have a box of extension leads and over the years they have got it down to a fine art and it really doesn’t take too long.
We ask the tree decorators to put the lights on their trees first [we peg this note to each tree], before their decorations and this works well. We encourage them to test their lights in a plug socket to check they work before arranging them on the trees and then once the tree is decorated just to leave the plug and the electricians then come and do all the plugging. Doing it this way means the public don’t have anything to do with plugging the actual trees in and it fits in with our Health and Safely and Risk Assessment policies for the CTF.
Decorators can use their own lights or the church can supply them. If the Church supplies them they could have a supply to be used or they could be included in a charge to decorate a tree. There could be complications if the decorators are paying and they would like a certain type of light, eg white rather than coloured or a special shaped or themed lights, eg flowers or candles. There are so many different types and sizes and lengths of lights around it is worth considering the options you are prepared to offer, if any. Some of the larger trees may need more than one set of lights and this can look odd if they aren’t the same sort of lights. In Stowmarket we have built up a collection of lights and we offer them to the decorators to help themselves to on a first come first served basis. We have sorted them into big boxes of coloured and big boxes of white lights. We put each set in a plastic bag so that they don’t all get tangled together which can be quite frustrating when trying to find a set.
This supply has taken years to acquire and we do find that most decorators do use our lights and to get the sets they would like they do come early to decorate their trees. [We have four days of decorating.] With us owning the lights we do have someone go through them each year and test them so that they are fit for purpose. In the guidelines we send out a few weeks before the Festival we say that if using your own lights they must be in good working order and will last the duration of the CTF. With the church having a supply of lights it does mean we have to store them so do consider storage space if you go for this option.
Pitch Charges
With regard to charging for a pitch, does this include a tree [real or artificial] or a tree and lights or just a space? These vary from £5 to £30 and in some circumstances even more depending on what is included. Some churches have a flat fee but others have a different charge for charities compared to businesses.
If you are providing real trees in the price, you may find that local nurseries can sometimes give you a good deal for buying a large number of trees. If the money is going to a local good cause then people are more willing to pay to decorate one. If you are charging for a pitch are you planning to have an entrance charge to the CTF or any other options for raising money once the visitors are in? Do you even have to charge to have a pitch/tree at all?
Looking through the CTF website at individual Festivals you will see all options and different amounts of monies raised. Whatever you decide, consider what else is going on in your area or church at the same time. It is also generally an expensive time of year for people and some people might be put off visiting because of the charges [especially if they are relying on your local foodbank for help]. Would you put people off going to church because they can’t afford it but on the other hand it is also a good time for raising money as people are generous at Christmas.
There are so many options so do carefully consider what is best for your congregation and your area and who you are trying to attract to see the trees, eg people with money, people who have a need, people who would like somewhere to go, etc?
There are different types of Christmas Tree Festivals so it is worth visiting a few to see some of the options. Look at the website to see where they are in your area. At Stowmarket we visited other Christmas Tree Festivals, spent over a year doing research and decided our aims at the very beginning which we feel was very valuable and kept us focused on what we wanted to do.