This past Saturday, German teacher Kellye Deane and some of the German National Honor Society students did an ornament drive. They ended up collecting five boxes of ornaments.
Throughout the past years, Gretna High School has done an ornament drive for people who aren’t able to go out and spend extra money on Christmas decorations. It all started from a Facebook post that Deane saw.
“I saw somebody that posted. She was doing a Christmas tree donation. It’s called the Holy Joly Christmas Project,” Deane said. “I thought, ‘oh, can we help out?’ We had an AI day that we had nothing to do, and I thought, well, if you want to come, we can help take the trees together.”
Every year, the German students have more achievements and things that they want to accomplish. This is junior Colette Brown’s second year helping with the ornament drive. Now that she has already been a part of it, she has more goals that she was hoping to accomplish.
“My biggest goal this year is to expand the ornament drive and get more people involved and in the know,” Brown said. “One of the biggest problems we’re facing this year is that people are unaware of its existence or its purpose. I started an Instagram page for GNHS this year, and I hope it will help spread the word.”
It was Kaylee Frederick’s first year helping out with the ornament drive since she is in GNHS. They usually don’t have a set goal for how many ornaments they would like to receive. This year, they got more than they were expecting.
“Also, having people help out with the Christmas tree packing, on the 29th of November,” Frederick said. “In past years we haven’t really gotten a lot of people to help out with that.”
Students can get involved with GNHS. They have meetings every month to plan different things, one being the ornament drive.
