Hamlet children have the chance to win a gift card, by helping to decorate the police department’s Christmas tree. Town Marshal Clint Norem says this marks the third year for the drawing.
“We are asking kids to make a decoration or purchase, how ever they want to do it, to put on the tree out here,” he explains. “And every kid that puts this decoration on has a chance to enter their name. They get a ticket. They give it to us. We do a drawing, and this year, what we’re going to do is give out gift cards.” Winners will be chosen in three age categories.
Norem says the goal of the drawing is to get kids more involved with the police department and the town. “The town belongs to the kids, and we want them to get involved in their town and bring a little bit more to the community,” he says. “And I thought this was an easy way to do it because it’s something simple. I mean, we’re not asking for some fancy decoration. I mean, I’ve had kids that have made a decoration out of Popsicle sticks, and we hung it on our tree.”
Norem adds that the ornaments from previous years’ drawings will be placed on the tree alongside the new ones. “These kids’ decorations that I have, I date them, so I put them back on the tree each year. And hopefully, long-term, there might be a time where a kid is older and comes and sees the tree and will see the decoration that they created when they were five or six years old.”
The winners will be drawn during Hamlet’s Christmas social next Saturday afternoon at 4:00, at the James R. Hardesty Hamlet-Davis Township Fire Station. Norem says that children who aren’t able to contribute an ornament ahead of time may enter at the Christmas social itself.
