Students bring holiday cheer to Landis Ave.

Staff photo/Craig Matthews

It felt like Christmas on the Avenue on Thursday.

Children from 23 area schools decorated Christmas trees for about a dozen businesses for the city's inaugural downtown decorating day.

"By the grace of God, it's just been a very nice thing with the community and schools," said Denise Procopio, a Wallace Middle School student guidance counselor who planned the event with her husband, John Procopio. "Everybody's been very, very helpful and friendly."

Members of the Vineland Downtown Improvement District and Vineland Board of Education will judge the trees on six categories from most creative to most traditional during the first week of December, Procopio said.

"I think it's nice that we can make it a little prettier for Christmas," Allison Federico, an eighth-grader from Cumberland Christian School, said as she decorated a tree at Finer Flowers.

Ronald Pender Jr., a barber at The Lay Up where 10 students from Mennies Elementary School decorated a "Santa Claus Around the World" tree, called the event "a very beautiful thing."

"Kids are the future and we want to give them a reason to come up this way and see a softened community, a community that's interested in their ideas and thoughts," Pender said.

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