To celebrate the beginning of Advent we held a Christmas Tree Festival from 1st – 3rd December 2023 in our beautiful 17^th century Church.  The aim of the Festival was to create a wonderful Christmas scene in the church and bring our community together in celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ.

All the trees were be supplied, decorated or sponsored by church groups, local primary schools, local organisations or by local businesses.  We would like to thank you all for agreeing to take part and helping make this first Killyleagh Christmas Tree Festival a success.

We would like to thank our generous sponsors for enabling us to provide free entry into the event as well as providing everyone with a soft drink and something to nibble on. Our major sponsor was the Henderson Group but we could not have put on such a fantastic festival without the support of businesses such as Killyleagh Box Company, The Down Recorder, Northern Ireland Plastics, McCloys Building Supplies, Mervyn Kirk Excavation & Groundworks, K Krafts, Beth Barrets, Sacred Magpie, Marcus McVeigh, Councilor Terry Andrews, Roderick Downer, Connie Kelly, Alison Henry and Sam & Susan Bennett. Donations were divided equally between Daisy Lodge, a cancer respite centre for children in Newcastle and our church funds.

During the festival there were a number of musical items and for the children an interactive nativity story, an advent hunt and a nativity hunt spread over the 3 days. We would like to thank all the musicians for taking part, as well as the organisers of these events.
The festival opened with the combined choirs of St Mary’s Primary, Killyleagh Integrated Primary and Cedar Integrated Primary at 10am on 1st December.
The festival closed with a service of prize giving at 5pm on Sunday 3rd. This service was led by the Rev. Adrian Dorrian who was supported by the choirs of the Parish and Presbyterian Churches.