By Rhys Baker
The Sixty-Ninth Annual Singing Christmas Tree will be held on Sunday, December 15th, at The Martyn Snodgrass Auditorium at Clay Center Community High School. This year’s star of the tree is Tovah Catlin, daughter of Aaron and Jessica Catlin. Tovah explains the process of being chosen as the star of the tree. “In late October, our teacher, Mrs. Bergston, tells all the seniors that there’s open auditions for the singing Christmas Tree Star, and we learn our own song. We get to pick the song, and then we practice on our own. And then there’s auditions, middle of November, and then we all audition, and then the stars picked, like, about a week later.”
The Singing Christmas Tree is a concept that involves a stage of risers making a triangle of sorts for the student singers in order to look like an artificial Christmas tree. Clay Center Community High School adds lights, wrapped packages and Christmas ornaments to the stage for a festive appearance. The traditional concept originated in 1933 at Belhaven University and has since spread to many countries. Catlin did not think she had much of a chance to be atop the tree, and prepared her musical solo selection for another purpose, “The song is Labor of Love. It’s written by Andrew Peterson from his Behold The Lamb of God Album, I’m really excited about that. The song includes lyrics about Mary and Bethlehem and that night. And I was thinking about singing it at church this Christmas season, and I was like, okay. I might as well just also try out with it because I really like it and something I wanted to share with people. So I’m really glad I can.”
The Singing Christmas Tree is a two-time performance each year. The first performance is Friday for Clay Center Community High School, Middle School, Garfield, and Lincoln Students. The second performance is a public performance for anyone in the community as admission for the performance is free. The 2024 Singing Christmas Tree will be held at 2pm this Sunday December 15th at Clay Center Community High School.
Check out a video of Tiger Chorale performing here: https://www.facebook.com/reel/1002012518608616
