NAHANT — The Parent Teacher Association’s annual Christmas tree lot sale is now open for business.
From now until supplies last, more than 90 locally-grown trees will be available for purchase every weekend in the Lowland parking lot next to the Nahant Lifesaving Station.
While residents may rejoice at the nostalgic sight of dozens of pines lined up for selection, PTO co-president Sherry Soleymani, who helped organize the event alongside co-president Antonella Raffaele, said that for several months, her organization worried the sale might not even happen.
“With all the restrictions the town and the state have had in place (because of COVID-19), many of the functions we normally do through the PTO were either canceled or denied,” Soleymani said, adding that the prospect of not hosting the sale at all was upsetting. “As careful as we’re trying to be, people have relied on us. This has been a 25-year tradition of the PTO.”
She said the most difficult issue the organization initially struggled to work around was finding volunteers who could operate under strict COVID-19 safety protocols.
Normally a family-friendly affair, Soleymani said parents and their young children have historically been the ones to step up to the plate and help out in groups of up to eight families at a time. But with so many towns on the North Shore seeing sharp spikes in COVID cases in recent weeks, however, having so many volunteers working at once was simply out of the question.
“Initially the thought was to give up because it was just impossible. We rely on all the volunteers because this is not a two-volunteer job,” she said.
To solve the problem, the PTO has instead enlisted just a few parents who will keep watch over the site from the cars and assist customers as needed.
“Quite frankly, I’m not opposed to it all. I think that with COVID numbers increasing all around the state and in the town of Nahant, these are the minimum requirements we should abide by,” Soleymani said.
In addition to fewer volunteers, the lot is also selling far fewer trees than in previous years, so Soleymani is urging residents to act quickly.
“It’s smaller. I call it a ‘modified version,’ but the sale is here and it’s going to continue on,” she said.
The lot will be open to customers on Fridays from 6 to 8 p.m., and Saturdays and Sundays from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.
