• Christmas Tree Lane Time Is Here Again

If it's Christmas time, it's also Christmas Tree Lane time too.

The day after Thanksgiving saw the official grand opening of The Original Christmas Tree Lane. You may have noticed that I've eschewed any further use of the hackneyed term, Black Friday. Allow me to suggest you follow suit. ☺

Did you know that in our area there are two "Christmas Tree Lane" events? 
   
The one at the outlets is known as The Original Christmas Tree Lane and the other one is at the Elks Lodge and is known just as Christmas Tree Lane. 
More about that at the bottom of the blog.

Two young shoppers, eagerly anticipating the first slice of cake celebrating the official opening of the Original Christmas Tree Lane event of 2016.

This is the 10th year of the event, and in that time they've raised $109,000 for local youth charities. According to their flyer, the 2015 event raised "a little over $10,000." With an all volunteer staff with no expenses incurred. 

The monies went to 

• Student of the year scholarships
• RYLA 
• Boy Scouts
• Wildomar Rotary Scholorships
• OCTL Scholorships
• Boys & Girls Club

There are 12 trees with values of at least $1000 that you can try to win. You do that by purchasing tickets and then placing them in receptacles near the display of your choice.

Cost of tickets.

The drawing will be held on Sunday December 18th at 4:00pm. 

Winners do NOT have to be present to win.

Among the 12 trees you'll find two that are cash trees. They come with $1000 as the key prize.

There are also trees from the Wildomar Chamber of Commerce and the Wildomar Rotary Club.

Link to the OCTL Website

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Elks Lodge Christmas Tree Lane

Saturday December 3, 2016

There are 10 trees that will be at the Elks Lodge Christmas Tree Lane event. 

A key difference between the two events is that you need to be present to win for this one.

The ten trees include:

• Be your Own Santa
• Movie Night
• Beautiful Patio
• Santa's Computer Room
• An old Fashioned Christmas
• Man Tree
• Christmas Candyland Toy Tree
• Little Tree, Big Bucks
• Tween Tree

Both groups are filled with good people, the proceeds are going to worthy causes, and they are a couple of weeks apart. Which means you have time to attend both... unless you have 30 plus people coming into town (like someone I know —me) and will not be available on the 18th.

Apparently, back on the yellow brick road (which is short for "before my time"), there was only one Christmas Tree Lane event in these here parts and it was held at the Elks Lodge. 

Thing is, on November 7th 2007 the old Elks Lodge was burned up in a fire and that interrupted a lot of things. Thankfully the Purple Pig survived... I'm not sure what that is, but ask a member of the Elks and they'll tell you.

The Purple Pig of BPOE 2591

Link to Press Enterprise article that mentions the fire.

I guess that the Outlets' event called dibs first for the distinction of Original or something, because they have it... even though logic would suggest it would've stayed with the Elks event since theirs has been going on for 18 years compared to just 10... but I'm not a math major so I'll just let that one go.

Baseball analogy time again
There once was a team called the Washington Senators that entered the American League in 1901. In 1960, after 60 years of mostly lousy play, they moved to Minnesota and became the Twins. 

Who knew how prescient he would turn out to be as the Senators stunk up the league for decades after this tongue in cheek quote hit the papers.

In the moving van they took all the records and stats with them. That means all of Walter Johnson's records are part of the Twins history, even if he never set foot in the land of 10,000 lakes.

That very year a new team came into Washington DC, and they were quickly dubbed the Senators. Thing is, they weren't the "Original" Senators, that group had up and moved to the midwest.

If that doesn't throw you for enough of a loop, in 1972 the new Washington Senators moved to Texas and changed their nickname to the Rangers (taking their paltry history with them too). 

Thankfully, when Washington finally got it's third team (the Nationals) in 2004 they chose not to resurrect the old Senators name. Still, if you google "When did the Washington Nationals start" you'll be informed: 1969, not 2004.

I almost forgot that the Nationals were the Montreal Expos for 35 years, before leaving the french portion of America's Hat (Canada) for the US capital.

What does any of that have to do with the two Christmas Tree Lane events? Probably nothing, but it was still cool to write about, and now you're better equipped the next time you play Trivial Pursuit.

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People have told me 'Betty, Facebook is a great way to keep in touch with old friends...'
.. At my age, if I wanted to keep in touch with old friends, I'd need a Ouija board.

— Betty White

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