Cub Scouts: Christmas Tree Decorating

The Cub Scouts of the 22nd Bermuda Cub Scout Pack made their own tree decorations and then decorated one of the Christmas trees at St Marks Church, Smith’s Parish. Each of the over 144 individual decorations and the long paper chain was fashioned by hand, and then hung on the tree by the Cub Scouts, boys aged between eight and ten.

Priest-in-charge at St Mark’s, Rev Peter Green later commented that many older parishioners remarked that the Cubs decorations reminded them of tree decorating in their youth, in a time before mass-produced glass and plastic tree ornaments and electric mini-lights were available and commonplace.

Twelve trees were decorated. The idea behind the tree decorating was twofold. First, it was an opportunity for the church and the wider community to collaborate on a project that had the celebration of Christmas as its central theme. Second, the idea was, as in ‘the olden days’ to use Bermuda Cedar trees as the tree to be decorated; then after Christmas, re-plant the Cedars in the grounds of the Church in a reforestation program.

However, the young Cedar saplings, even though tall and strong, still could not have taken the weight of the decorations. So imported trees, the now usual forest pines from Canada, were used instead.

The week before, the Cub Scouts spent an entire evening making paper lanterns, paper snowflakes, paper cones that held artificial flowers, layered paper bells and stars, and a long paper chain. The next time they met, they came to St Mark’s and put these hand-made decorations on the six foot high tree that they had been given to decorate. They used a purple and green colour scheme throughout as these are traditional Scouting colours.

After the tree decorating, the Cubs went across to St Mark’s Church Hall and had a few snacks and something to drink.

This was not the only December activity for the 22nd Bermuda Cub Scout Pack. On a cold, windy, and sometimes wet Saturday 4th December, from 9:00am until 4:00pm, the Cub Scouts, accompanied by their parents, manned a ‘tagging station’ at the Harrington Hundreds Grocery where they collected money for the Sunshine League. Every year, and at the same tagging point and in the same way, the Cubs of this pack also tag for the Lion’s Clubs annual White Cane Week. Each year, their tagging activity raises over two thousand dollars for these two charities. One year, on a particularly wet day, for all taggers across the Island, the Cub Scouts tagging raised the highest amount for that day with their buckets bringing in over $1,400.

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