The annual Festival of Trees, hosted by the United Way, will once again support area food banks. Local communities and schools, such as Woodland Regional High School, decorate and donate themed Christmas trees to be raffled off.

Marking Woodland’s eighth year of generosity, the Festival of Trees is back. This holiday staple has been made possible by Robert Murdy. With his guidance, Woodland has been a top donor, giving one of the most generous donations to the cause.

“For the last couple of years, Woodland has been the biggest school contributor to the Festival of Trees,” Murdy said.

He began as someone who found the event to be a valuable way to give back to the community. Through his contributions, the organization soon recognized his importance and appointed him as a top organizer and leader for the school portion of the event at Woodland.

“I just sort of stepped in because they needed trees picked up, they needed trees delivered. They needed someone to organize,” Murdy said.

Woodland contributed 12 trees to this year’s donation. Each advisory decorating a tree has a personalized, unique theme to make the event more enjoyable. Themes have included local history, movie night and train tracks.

“So this year, the theme for my advisory was ‘giving a little bit of local history,’” Murdy said. “The students donated a couple of dollars that we folded into origami hearts to decorate the tree with, then I did little bits of Naugatuck history on timber ornaments.”

Woodland advisor Jess DeGennaro and her advisory decided to take a different approach to their tree.

“The first year, my advisory and I designed a Starbucks tree,” DeGennaro said. “We definitely wanted to come up with a theme that we think people would put in the raffle for.”

This theme was a good seller, but they decided that they should move toward a theme directed at children in need.

“One year, we had a Hot Wheels tree with cars. So we had a race track going around the tree, and then we tied individual cars to the different branches,” DeGennaro said. “And this year we wanted to stick with the theme for children, so we did Candy Land, and then we had a basket of candy, and then we taped lollipops to all the branches.”

This event is also beneficial to advisors who need community service and the opportunity to come together and give back to the community. DeGennaro has been attending this event for the past 20 years, even before she had an advisory.

The advisory is given complete freedom to choose the theme and how they want to decorate it, but participants must follow a minimal number of rules set by the United Way.

According to the United way website, All trees and wreaths must be artificial, as the use of living materials is prohibited, with the exception of dried flowers. For lighting, miniature lights are preferred. It is crucial that all ornaments are securely wired onto the tree, preferably using green florist wire, as exhibits will be moved and are subject to viewing by hundreds of people. Finally, any item not directly attached to the exhibit, such as a tree skirt, must be clearly labeled in case it separates from the display during transport.

Participants can do more than just trees; the raffle also includes wreaths, baskets or stockings. No matter what is donated, everything will be on display and raffled off.