Credit: Joey Fay

The Boy Scouts will be selling trees on Fridays from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m., Saturdays 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Sundays noon to 6 p.m. until they sell out. “This event is one of the things that [the Boy Scouts] get to have a direct impact on the community,” freshman Alex Macleod said.

With twinkling lights above, Christmas music pouring out of a speaker and friendly chatter all around, the annual Wayland Boy Scouts Christmas Tree Sale is in full swing at the Methodist Church in Wayland. Troop One has been selling trees for decades with about 250 trees coming from the Canadian province, Nova Scotia, each year.

The Boy Scouts run the event each year, raising money from the sales for their future trips and activities. The sale of the Christmas trees can also help the troop purchase equipment needed for future trips, such as stoves and tents.

“We use the sales from this [fundraiser] to put back into the troop, so we can do things like offer scholarships for kids that need help going on trips,” assistant scoutmaster Craig Bradford said. “We can also just take all of our trips, and we’ll put some money in the bank towards that so that the trips become cheaper and easier to go on.”

While the scout leaders recognize that the sales of the trees directly helps the troop, Bradford says that the experience also provides many indirect benefits to the Boy Scouts. The tradition is a social event for the Boy Scouts and their parents as families are also encouraged to sell the trees with their scouts during their assigned shift.

“It helps parents that might not know each other get together,” Bradford said.

In addition to getting to work alongside each other, the Boy Scouts and their families meet members of the community who are looking for their perfect Christmas tree while supporting a local organization. Bradford, a Wayland resident, enjoys seeing scouts who have long graduated from the program return to buy a tree or simply “come by and hangout.”

Some current scouts, such as freshman Aidan Spelman, enjoy meeting new people and learning life skills in this festive environment. As of now, there are 40 active scouts in the program with 11 high schoolers, five of which are Eagle Scouts.

“It’s fun to meet people from the town and other neighboring towns while [getting] to learn skills,” Spelman said.

Spelman has been selling trees for several years and takes pride in his sales pitches and helping customers. The scouts provide customers’ trees with a fresh cut and also secure it to the roof of cars.

“I think I [have] really good sales skills, and I get to talk to different types of people, so it’s cool meeting everybody,” freshman Cash Bradford said. “[I’ve learned] the ability to talk to whoever I meet [and] it’s really fun.”

Selling trees in Wayland has become a tradition for many years and with it comes many memories. In 2006, a normal year nearly turned into a holiday disaster when a “Grinch” made a visit to Wayland and stole around $2,000 worth of trees from the Boy Scouts in the middle of the night. Wayland responded quickly, coming together to support their scouts.

“The local news picked it up as a story and interviewed a bunch of people,” Craig Bradford said. “The community poured out and donated money, and another nursery donated a bunch of trees for us to sell. It was really an amazing experience that showed how the community rallied around us and helped us right back.”

With many places in the area to buy your Christmas tree, the Boy Scouts make their case why the community should buy it from them.

“We buy premium trees,” Craig Bradford said. “There are grades of trees, and so it depends on how many faces [of the tree] are good, and we only buy the best premium tree, so our trees are really good quality. [When you buy it from us] you know that this is going to support a really good cause as it’s going to fund the Boy Scouts where parent volunteers help teach leadership and guidance to their boys.”