The Singing Christmas Tree

The 38th annual Singing Christmas Tree of Sweet Home, Oregon, is a free Christmas musical concert held in the Sweet Home High School’s auditorium on December 6th, 7th, and 8th of 2019.  The program starts at 7:30pm on Friday and Saturday, and at 3pm on Sunday. The concert consists of forty singers and over twenty Christmas songs, including audience sing along songs such as “Here Comes Santa Claus,” “Away in a Manger,” and other Christmas favorites. Sweet Home Children’s Choir will be performing as well, singing four songs before joining the Singing Christmas Tree Choir for a fifth song. Majority of the singers are from Sweet Home, but some are from Lebanon, Albany, and Brownsville. Singers in the tree range in age from twelve to ninety-four.
Sue Olson, the program chairman and bough coordinator, as well as alto singer, can hardly contain her excitement for another year of Sweet Home’s Singing Christmas Tree. Olson has been involved with the program since it’s fourth year, when her eldest son played in a brass quintet. “I was completely mesmerized by the lights, by the music —just everything. I just knew I wanted to be apart of it,” Olson explains. The Christmas tree itself is handmade by Olson and the support crew. “They’re real boughs. Cascade Timber Consulting trims alongside the roadsides, then members pick them up for us and bring them down. We’re very lucky the fire marshal let’s us use real boughs, we have to spray them all with fire retardant beforehand,” Olson says while demonstrating how the crew weaves the boughs through wire to make the tree.

  Board members meet throughout the year in order to organize the finest program possible for their audience. Rehearsals, the making of the tree, and decorating begins in late November.

Second year music director and conductor for Sweet Home's Singing Christmas tree, John Kluttz, leads the choir through practice in the decorated and lighted Christmas tree for the first time, days before their first performance. 

During rehearsal, singers in the tree practice using candles while singing "Candle in Your Heart."

Judy Stevens, the Singing Christmas Tree's rehearsal accompanist, is assisted by a page turner during practice several days before the first performance of the 38th annual Singing Christmas Tree. Bill Langdon will be the program accompanist with his son, Michael Langdon, as page turner for the performances on December 6th, 7th, and 8th.