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Sandy Hook Community Gets Together For Annual Tree Lighting

Published: Dec 13, 2025 7:00 am

On Saturday, December 6, Sandy Hook Organization for Prosperity welcomed guests of all ages for the annual holiday event centered around the tree on the corner of Riverside Road and Washington Avenue. The 2025 tree lighting continued a yearly tradition that offers a variety of activities for children to enjoy.

The event started at 4 pm, allowing guests the opportunity to meet Santa — who again arrived via a Sandy Hook Volunteer Fire & Rescue truck — and share what they have on their Christmas wish lists. Attendees were invited to bring non-perishable food items for FAITH Food Pantry, and those who did were entered into a raffle to officially light the tree.

Following the meet-and-greet power hour, families enjoyed an opportunity to show off their singing voices with karaoke. Once karaoke was over at 6:30 pm, the tree was officially lit.

A flash mob of dancers from The Graceful Planet then took over the intersection of Church Hill Road, Washington Avenue, Riverside Road and Glen Road, where they dazzled family, friends and others with their talent.

Many families tried their hand at karaoke on Saturday, December 6 for Sandy Hook’s annual Christmas Tree Lighting. —Bee Photos, Glass

Sandy Hook Center has two trees that get decorated for the Christmas season, including this young one in The Glen.

Students from Graceful Planet Dance Studio performed a flash mob for the crowd on Saturday, December 6.

Sandy Hook’s Christmas tree officially lit up the night for the first night of the season on December 6. This tree sits on the eastern corner of the four-way intersection of Church Hill Road, Riverside Road, Glen Road, and Washington Avenue.

Newlyweds Tess Gillette and Michael Burton, president of Sandy Hook Organization for Prosperity, stopped for a moment amid the tree lighting activities in Sandy Hook Center on Saturday.

Santa Claus paid Sandy Hook a visit on Saturday, December 6 to watch the community tree be lit up once again.

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Unfortunately, I think this is likely to get worse, not better... Based on both public comments and private conversations, I’m increasingly concerned that our newly elected First Selectman intends not just to install these cameras, but to expand their use for full-blown enforcement and fines. Try getting a straight answer out of him about the long-term plan and you quickly realize how vague the responses become. Tyler is absolutely right to raise the privacy issue. These systems don’t just “catch speeders” — they quietly build a database of where we drive, when we drive, and who is in our vehicles. Once that infrastructure is in place, it becomes very easy to justify expanding its scope: more cameras, more locations, more uses, and eventually more automated enforcement. If Newtown is going down this road, residents deserve clear, written answers to some basic questions before anything is expanded: What limits will be placed on how and where cameras are used? Will footage and plate data be used only for speed enforcement, or for other investigations too? How long will data be stored, and who can access it? What safeguards will prevent vendors and individuals from abusing this information? Without firm, enforceable rules in place, “just a few cameras to slow traffic” can turn into something very different over time. I support safe roads — but not at the cost of unchecked surveillance and vague promises from our leaders. You try getting straight answers out of our First Selectman, myself and others have not been able to...

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I had to hold back a laugh at the idea that 7:30 pm is apparently such a late-night hardship that we’re already talking about moving meetings earlier. For a lot of residents, 7:30 is the earliest they can realistically get to Town Hall after work, family obligations, and the rest of real life. Shifting BOS meetings to 7:00 might make the calendar look tidier for those in the building, but it makes participation harder for the people who pay for the building. If the new First Selectman’s week is already booked solid and evening meetings feel like a strain, that’s not a reason to move the goalposts on public access—it's a reminder that the job is supposed to be demanding. Public service means accommodating the public, even when it’s inconvenient.

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Real people were just in a frightening car accident. To immediately frame their misfortune as rhetorical ammunition against new housing — affordable housing included — feels less like concern for “health and safety” and more like opportunistically using a scary moment to support a pre-existing position. If we’re going to debate this proposal, we should do it honestly: with data on traffic volume, accident history, engineering recommendations, and the town’s housing needs, not by seizing on a single crash as proof that 300 apartments are inherently unsafe. Newtown deserves a thoughtful, fact-based conversation about growth, safety, and affordability — one that doesn’t turn other people’s bad day into a political talking point.

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To add context that did not occur at the meeting would not be an accurate representation of the meeting and would, in fact, be editorializing to shape public opinion. The editorial staff here do not consider ourselves to be final arbiters of what the truth is (and if we did, it would make us partisan and biased), and we would need to provide a source for any dissenting information (sourcing all information in an article is literally Journalism 101). There were no such sources present at the meeting in question, and so it would not be appropriate to include such information in an article about the meeting. Dissenting voices appear in meeting stories when there were active participants with dissenting opinions, such as during public participation or the words of a council member who disagreed. It should be noted that the Interfaith Council, like many local boards and commissions, conduct meetings that are open to the public. This was not an article on the actions of the Greater Danbury Area Unites for Immigrants, or on immigrants, or on ICE's actions in the community, where including other voices or perspectives would be appropriate. We appreciate your opinion, but we stand by our meeting coverage and consider this discussion closed.

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Propaganda is the systematic dissemination of information, often biased or misleading, to shape public perception and behavior toward a specific political cause or point of view. I'm not asking for Newtown Bee to editorialize, but providing context, where appropriate, to provide the reader with a more holistic view of the facts seems like a reasonable practice, particularly when encouraging the reader to decide what to believe/not to believe. Absent that context, this feels biased and misleading and intended to shape public perception.

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Sandy Hook Community Gets Together For Annual Tree Lighting

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