STURGEON BAY (NBC 26) — The Door County Maritime Museum is getting into the holiday spirit while also supporting local businesses.
This week the museum kicked off it’s 10th annual Merry-Time Festival of Trees. Each year, the museum is decorated with trees, wreaths and other objects that are donated by local businesses and organizations in the community. Each one comes with its own gifts.
Visitors can enter a raffle for a chance to win a tree or other object of their choice. Every adult who visits the museum gets one free raffle ticket and additional tickets are available for purchase. Raffle winners will be announced at the Jingle Mixer Gala on December 14th.
“Some of these trees have $1600 worth of value on them and some just 30, 40, 50 or 100 hundred dollars but each are different, they’re all individual,” said executive director Kevin Osgood.
As far as the decorating is concerned, Osgood says the only rule is to make the trees as creative as possible.
“We’ve had all kinds of trees over the years. We’ve had them cut from metal plating and sort of burned to create a look on them," Osgood said. "We’ve had trees that weighed 70, 80, 90 pounds that were made out of the metal that was cut.”
When it comes to materials, just about anything goes. One of the tree displays featured this year, called "Forest of Treats", is made entirely of reusable materials such as pallets and old lumber.
With the workers shortage, the museum was unsure of how many businesses would be able to participate this year.
“At first it was 'oh my gosh yeah we want to be a part of that but we’re short handed and short staffed' like we all of have been this year. So how do we do this?” Osgood said.
But in Christmas miracle fashion, this year turned out to be the museum’s largest festival of trees in its ten year history.
“The largest number we’d ever had in the past was about 42, 43 and we’ve surpassed that this year," Osgood said. "It’s close to 45. We’re sitting at 44 and we’re still expecting another tree or two to come in.”
Osgood says it’s a holiday tradition that’s only grown in Sturgeon Bay over the years.
“It’s made a reputation in and of itself and people just rallied," Osgood said. "They were hesitant at first, we don’t know if we’re going to have the people, the time to do it because we’re short staffed but they found a way and that’s just fantastic.”
