Martin's plea for festive ornaments from overseas for Melton's Christmas Tree Festival

Martin Copson, who lives in Heather Crescent, intends to collect 120 Christmas ornaments from around the world to display at this year’s Christmas Tree Festival in St Mary’s Church, Melton.

He is asking people who go on holiday or who have relatives abroad to help him achieve his aim of getting the ornaments to show off on a “tree of the world” a the festival on Friday, December 1.

“At last year’s festival I thought that there wern’t many trees that you could discuss with people as they walked round,” said Martin, who has been on the Christmas Tree Festival organising committee for the last two years.

“We had the Aleppo tree and the tree by the multicultural Bridge Junior School in Leicester but all the rest of the trees, despite how beautiful they were and how nice they were and different, you couldn’t really tell a story about them.

“I thought if we had a tree that people who live abroad sent decorations for, we could have a tree from the people of the world.

“Then, if people who went on holiday to these places also brought back a decoration for the tree, we could have it in a window and talk people through which decorations were from which country, how they got here and more information about them.

“The most important thing is I can’t guarantee to get any of the decorations back to people. It’s got to be something people say ‘I bought this for the tree’ not ‘ it’s my prized possession from outer Mongolia, I must have it back’ because I can’t guarantee that it won’t get dropped or broken.”

Martin already has an impressive collection of ornaments from abroad for the tree including eight from Holland, five from Belgium, three from Italy, three from Spain, two from Germany, a selection from America and one from Cyprus, Estonia, Mexico and South Africa.

If you have any decorations you would like to see on the “tree of the world” you can drop them in to Alison Kitching in the Parish Office at the Samworth Centre, Burton Street, Melton, marked for Martin’s attention. Remember to included your name, address and telephone number and say where the decoration has come from.