Just as promised at the Parks and Recreation Commission’s last meeting, new lights were strung on the Harvard Common’s “Christmas spruce” on Monday, Dec. 8, in readiness for the lighting this Sunday, Dec. 14, at 5:30 p.m.
Chairwoman Wyona Lynch-McWhite told the Press that tree warden Christian Bilodeau had contacted her and made arrangements for one of his colleagues, Prestigious Tree in Acton, to help out. Bilodeau said his own lift couldn’t reach high enough—the tree is anywhere from 85 to 100 feet, depending on whom you ask.
The commission members had purchased new LED lights for the tree, and last Saturday Prestigious Tree removed all of the old ones. That was about all they could do in the cold rain. All told, the project will cost more than $2,000, to be paid by a $1,200 donation from the Woman’s Club and funding from Parks and Recreation. Repair of the electrical box under the tree remains to be done.
A search of the Historical Society archives turned up very little history on the tree-lighting tradition or the tree itself. Retired firefighter Royall Cregar, who began decorating the tree in 1998, believes the tree was planted in 1912. This was the year when electricity came to Harvard, and perhaps the tree lighting started soon after.
A picture in the archives shows a tree labeled “Christmas spruce” in which the tree looks about half its current size; but, unfortunately, the picture is not dated. Cregar says that when he was growing up in the 1950s, the fire department decorated the tree. At some point, Parks and Recreation took over the responsibility.
A December 1977 issue of the old Harvard Post has a picture of Bill Mead in a cherry picker, decorating the tree. Mead owned a tree service business in town, but there is no information on who might have commissioned him. In “Hill Country: a Song of the Land of a New England Town Harvard, Mass.” by Janet Streeter Fowke, published in 1985, Fowke illustrates the “lighting of the Christmas tree” as one of the sights on the Harvard Common.
It’s difficult to trace a tradition. The lighting of the spruce tree on the Common seems always to have “just happened.” And though we know that there are people and money and planning behind it, we like to see it as just a wonderful example of the good will of the holiday season.
