Huge Norway Maple is located dead center on historic North Common
Citizens may want to bring their sunglasses to this year's Merry Maple tree lighting ceremony on December 4th -- the 40th anniversary of the happy wholesome family event.
Because for the first time in memory the holiday tree chosen for illumination is the original BIG tree in the middle of our historic North Common.
Since the creation of the Business Improvement District the lighting of the Merry Maple did improve somewhat with the addition of lights, and the town has also improved the electricity on the town common somewhat to avoid short outs that would suddenly darken the tree.
But nothing that compared to the original Merry Maple of the bygone days when town center had a hardware store, grocery store and a locally owned drug store.
Or maybe that's just my selective memory.
Merry Maple appeared for six seconds in movie "Silent Night, Lonely Night"
Of course I do also remember when the Merry Maple was lit up in the spring of 1968 for the filming of "Silent night, lonely night", which strikes me as a little longer than 40 years ago.
3 comments:
Thank you to the BID for this!
I remember the original big Merry Maple fondly. You could see it for miles when driving west down Route 9 coming from Belchertown. The little trees are lovely with the branches wrapped, but not as memorable and unique as standing under the original MM.
Amherst Cinema really needs to show Silent Night, Lonely Night over the holidays- The views of downtown, the common and the scenes in the old movie theatre are worth it! Maybe Shirley Jones would like to visit Amherst for the anniversary.
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