The Salvation Army's Tree of Lights celebration will be put on hiatus this Christmas - but don't worry, says Capt. Neil Wilkinson, a revamped version will be back next year.
"It's too valuable of a symbol within the community and too wonderful of a tradition," he said Monday. "But every tradition sometimes needs a growing period to keep up with what's going on in the community."
For the last 30 years, the holiday season has traditionally been kicked off in Prince George with the light up of a 50-foot-tall Christmas tree hoisted to the top of the Coast Inn of the North. It has also marked the start of one of the Salvation Army's two key fundraising campaigns, the other being the Christmas kettle campaign.
Saying "things aren't the way they used to be," Wilkinson said the Salvation Army and the partners involved in the event have been thinking of ways to give it a new face. But after running into a time crunch, he said they're taking a year to "reimagine how we can best use that symbol within the community."
"What we want to do is honour the long-term partnerships that we have and be as effective as we can possibly be with the utilization of the symbol of the Tree of Lights," he said.
"I don't want anyone to think that we're dispensing of anything that we've done historically, that we don't value those long-term partnerships. We just want to honour the best intentions of all of our partners and that's what we're looking at."
