Old Dogwood Park Christmas Tree Called Into Service For One More Year

Get your last looks, the Dogwood Park Christmas tree will be replaced after this year.

Director of Leisure Services Rick Woods said the city ordered a new tree with the intent of using it this Christmas, but the tree the city received was wrong. Woods said the color of the lights on the new tree was among the tree’s greatest inaccuracies. Woods said the old tree still looks great, so one more year with it will not cause any issues.

“I think this year, you won’t notice a big difference,” Woods said. “It looks great, it’s operating well, everything is working well. We had a great event Sunday night to light the tree and the shows will play. The synchronized light shows will play at 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9:00.”

Woods said the current tree was set to be replaced due to issues with its wiring harness and wiring connection inside the tree.

“After it arrived here and we looked at it and said this is not the right color lights, we contacted them and they said, ‘Yes, you’re right, we messed up, but we cannot get it replaced and back to you before your event before the beginning of December,’ so we had to go with what we had,” Woods said.

Woods said the issues have been addressed and the light shows will run through January 2. Woods said he hopes everyone will savor their last chance to enjoy the atmosphere around the beautiful, traditional tree before it is replaced.

Woods said the topper on the current tree was also having some stability issues in recent years. Woods said through working on the tree, the topper has been stabilized for this holiday season, but that was among the main reasons for replacing the tree. Woods said the new tree will be similar, but the time has come to upgrade.

“We can program some different music and some different shows, but the tree itself will be very very similar to the existing tree that we have,” Woods said.

Woods said keeping the new tree nearly uniform with the existing tree will allow the city to use the retired tree for replacement parts. Woods said the ornaments on the current tree are fading, so the most noticeable difference with the new tree will be a newer, fresher, brighter appearance.