Countywide : Groups to Vie at Tree Decorating

Local charities have an unusual way to earn money this holiday season.

Nordstrom department stores in Orange County are hosting Christmas tree decorating contests aimed especially at local nonprofit groups.

The best-decorated Christmas tree at each of the chain’s six Orange County stores could earn the winning organizations big bucks.

Three or four nonprofit groups, ranging from the Alzheimer’s Assn. of Orange County to a Long Beach-based AIDS organization, will compete at each store. Each group already is busy making decorations for the eight-foot-high trees.

Charity representatives will decorate the trees on Tuesday. The trees will remain on display until Dec. 5. On the last night, store customers will vote for the best tree between 6:30 and 9:30 p.m. The winner from each store will collect 5% of that evening’s total sales.

After the contest, the trees will be auctioned off, and the money will go to the charities.

At Nordstrom Mainplace in Santa Ana, the Bowers Museum of Cultural Art, the Discovery Museum of Orange County and the Assistance League of Tustin will vie for the best-decorated tree.

“We’ve done everything we can to cultivate money, but we’ve never done anything like this before,” said Brian Langston of the Bowers Museum, which displays art of indigenous people of the Americas, the Pacific Rim and Africa. “We’re pleased to be asked to participate.”

The Bowers Museum will decorate its tree with items from the gallery store. “We’ll have an indigenous arts Christmas Tree,” Langston said.

The Discovery Museum in Santa Ana, a fully restored 1898 house that illustrates life in the 19th Century for children, will have its tree decorated by the students in teacher Alice McFadden Partridge’s special needs class.

The children in her class at Urban H. Plaven Elementary School in Fountain Valley are working on tree decorations as part of a class project.