Christmas spirit saves day for Wainfleet Christmas tree festival
A community that has survived floods and a pandemic has rallied once more to raise funds for a new boiler for Wainfleet Methodist Church to make sure there is a warm welcome for the church's Christmas tree festival. The celebration is part of Wainfleet's big festive weekend, featuring a Christmas market, lights switch-on and Festive Fabuloso.
Transcript
00:00 A warm welcome awaits visitors to this year's Christmas Tree Festival at Wainfleet Methodist
00:06 Church after the community rallied to pay for a new boiler.
00:10 The Christmas trees are looking fabulous. It's a double celebration this year, isn't
00:16 it, for Wainfleet Methodist Church? Yes it is. We've got a Christmas Tree Festival
00:22 and we want to say thank you to the whole community of Wainfleet for the support that
00:26 they've given us during a difficult time with raising funds for our boiler and water system.
00:33 And in six months we've managed to raise over £11,000 and in this area that's took some
00:40 doing but they've been so supportive. They've had teddy bears picnics where we've had the
00:46 funds given by all the mums, the local shops have had the money jars and people have come
00:53 into the church and put their coins or their notes and really helped us. We had a GoFundMe
01:00 page that somebody set up for the community and they raised £1,000 so it's just been
01:07 amazing. Hi, I'm Brian Harbour and I've been brought
01:11 in to help with the Christmas Tree celebrations for Wainfleet. It's my wife Carol's idea and
01:17 she's been doing it now and we've been doing it now for three years. We've grown over the
01:23 last three years, this is our third year, from very few trees where we had about eight,
01:31 nine, ten up to this year where we've got about 21 trees, not including our own Christmas
01:36 trees of course. We started off with one artificial tree for the church and now this year we've
01:44 managed to move the number up to four. People have been donating them. My wife is pretty
01:50 good at evangelising for these trees. We were in the Argos the other day, standing by a
01:57 woman waiting to collect her new artificial tree and Carol says, "What are you doing with
02:02 your old one?" and she says, "Well, I'm taking it down the tip." Well, it's now standing
02:06 private place in the front of the church, decorated up and it looks lovely, a little
02:11 donation. We've also had a donation from Parker, they've given us one of their trees as well.
02:17 So it's been good. We've also had the foliage which has been donated by a church in Spillsbury
02:23 which grows, the owner grows Christmas trees and sells them off for Christmas and she donated
02:31 one which she couldn't sell and we turned them into these decorations which are hung
02:36 off the balcony. The Christmas Tree Festival at Wainfleet Methodist Church is part of Wainfleet's
02:43 big festive weekend which also includes a Christmas market, light switch on and festive fabluso.
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