Active during holidays?

[Zahnada 11]

Well, the holiday season is back again. I was wondering if your troops have any special traditions they do during this time of year. What do you do to make December special?

 

My troop delivers canned food to families every year at this time. We use to have troop day outings as well (swimming pool, movie, basketball). For some reason, there's always something different about this time of the year in scouting.

 

What do you do?

[matuawarrior 10]

We hold our own long-term camp between Dec. 27th and 31st. We've been doing this since 1997 with the exception of 2001 and 2002.

 

Our Senior Scouts and Venturers conduct MB classes as CIT's. We use this time to Bring our new Scouts up to par with First Class First Year Requirements.

 

We'll be having Fun,

 

Matua

 

[mk9750 11]

As I posted elsewhere, we do a visit to the VA Hospital with gift bags of socks, t-shirts, toiletries and such.

 

The only week of the year we do not have a meeting scheduled is between Christmas and New Year. However, we have traditionally done an "advancement marathon" on New Years Eve. We have the older guys available to meet with the young guys for rank advancement, then we make MB Councelors for the common MBs our guys do available. Plenty of pizza, pop, and other munchies all day long, from about 9:00 to 3:30 or so. We do this at the SM's house to make it more relaxed.

 

My personal philosophy says it's too early to call this the Christmas season, but what the heck - Merry Christmas to all my fellow cyber Scouters! Thank you for the gifts you all have given me over the year.

 

Mark

[OutdoorThinker 10]

The crew has a few annual holiday traditions.

 

The first happens the first Saturday in December (although, because of a snowstorm, it's been canceled ) We ususally head off to NYC and enjoy the Christmas decorations, do touristy things, eat lunch at a cool restuarant somewhere. The trip is really cool, because we make plans on the ride to NJ.

 

The second is a holiday party. We have it instead of a meeting in December. We once even had Santa come!!

 

The third is a snow tubing trip a few days after Christmas. We go snow tubing in the poconos in the evening for a few hours. It's really a lot of fun and its scheuduled so that the college students can come home and hang out with the crew on their break. (Ironically, I am going to miss it this year. :-( )

[mschwartz 10]

Our Pack has a Holiday Party every year. We combine it with collecting Toys for Tots (either a local Marine comes in uniform to pick up the toys, or else one of the town police officers comes, also in uniform. The boys get a big kick out of that). Before the party, we band together in three or four groups and go sing carols at area nursing homes. So it's a pretty busy day! But everyone has a great time.

[NJCubScouter 1389]

My son's pack did Toys for Tots as well as holiday (Christmas and Hanukkah) caroling at some (usually two) nursing homes. At the pack meeting before the nursing home visits, the boys make crafts (holiday-themed) to give as gifts to the residents.

 

Now that my son in the troop I am not seeing anything like this... the only acknowledgment of the holidays is that our annual fund-raiser is a wreath sale. Ti$ the $eason, I guess. I'm not knocking it, it's a great fund-raiser... we apparently have a florist connection who gets us the wreaths literally at his cost. I think the troop's profit per wreath is slightly over $7, of which the boys' accounts get between $2 and $2.50 depending on number of wreaths sold.

 

The troop needs to do more holiday-oriented stuff, though... I think caroling and crafts are out at this level, but a toy drive is reasonable and I will suggest it for next year. With there almost always being a family or two "split" between the pack and troop, we could probably just piggyback on the pack's Toys for Tots drive.

[hops_scout 9]

A group who does airsoft (similar to paintball, but with bb guns) had an event two weeks ago. They collected toys for T4T thing. They had two US Marine HUMMERs come out and they filled at least one of them. They also had a bunch of Marines come out and play for the day. I heard it was sweet.