Launched in 1988 featuring the town’s rooster weather vane as designed by Lorraine VanderWende, Newtown Woman’s Club Christmas Ornament Project is an ongoing fundraiser for the club. A new design has been released each subsequent year, always celebrating a place or entity related to Newtown.

Last year’s ornament honored Newtown Forest Association while the state’s oldest private land trust celebrated its centennial. Previous designs have paid homage to the 9/11 Memorial Grove in Dodgingtown, Ferris Acres Farms, Newtown Meeting House, Newtown Police Department, the former Yankee Drover, and even the logo of The Newtown Bee, among many others.

The 2025 release depicts a traditional wreath drawn by current NWC President Rosemary Rau. She and other members were in the process of deciding what this year’s design would be, Rau told The Newtown Bee last week, when she serendipitously found a patriotic tie-in to the traditional holiday decoration and the Constitution State.

“I started looking at wreaths and their history,” she said December 9. While doing that, she said, she also began reading about Wreaths Across America. Rau learned residents of Connecticut were among those to support the project that began in 1992 with a wreath maker in Harrington, Maine, taking 5,000 surplus wreaths to Arlington Cemetery.

The project has grown exponentially. Last year over three million sponsored wreaths were placed on headstones of service members at 4,909 locations.

“Connecticut was one of the first states to help this project, which I was incredibly proud to learn,” Rau said. “It’s the perfect segue, the idea that people in this state stepped up to support this program that lays wreaths on graves. It’s a great sign of respect and generosity.”

Rau was looking forward to tracking this year’s Wreaths Across America journey, she said. The 2025 National Wreaths Across America Day was Saturday, December 13. Ahead of that, the traditional Escort To Arlington — a convoy of 13 tractor-trailer trucks traveling from Maine to Virginia carrying wreaths destined for the national cemetery — took place, with stops and education presentations along the way. The group passed through Connecticut on December 10.

More than two million volunteers were expected to gather to lay wreaths at more than 5,200 participating locations in all 50 states, at sea, and abroad.

Rau calls the happy coincidence of the Woman’s Club ornament design and the mission of Wreaths Across America “a transfusion of patriotism.”

The 2025 Newtown Woman’s Club ornament is available at the office of Bee Publishing Company, 5 Church Hill Road; the Circulation Desk at C.H. Booth Library, 25 Main Street; Newtown MediSpa, 34 Church Hill Road; and The Toy Tree, 32 Church Hill Road.

Ornaments remain $20 each, payable by cash or check.

They continue to be produced by Woodbury Pewter, and each includes the brief history as written by Rau.

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Managing Editor Shannon Hicks can be reached at shannon@thebee.com.