Town tree lighting is Friday

Yes, Littleton, there is a Santa Claus, and his name is George Mosca.

At least you’d be hard pressed to convince some folks in town otherwise.

Mosca is a Raleigh businessman with a home at Lake Shores, and Sally Hawfield, who heads up a committee that works to keep the town decorated and spruced up, said Mosca is responsible for just about all the snowflakes, Christmas lights, and the town Christmas tree.

The whole process started a couple of years ago, she said, when several residents in town began questioning why the town wasn’t doing something about what she called the “big holly trees” that were getting overgrown along Main Street.

“It would take a bucket truck to cut them and then to put up Christmas decorations, and the town didn’t have the money to pay someone to do something like that.”

So, she contacted Progress Energy, which came in and cut the trees down. Then, Sally said, the crepe myrtle trees that now line Main Street were donated to the town.

“George Mosca would pass through the town, and it was just the saddest little town with no Christmas trees,” she said with a laugh. “He called me and said ‘We have 12 snow flakes I’ve taken down from a shopping center in Virginia.’ I said we don’t have any way to put them up.”

So, Mosca, owner of Mosca Designs Inc., not only gave the snowflakes to the town, but he sent a crew of his own men to put them up.

With the snowflakes and Christmas lights in the new crepe myrtle trees, last season Main Street was decorated and lit up for Christmas for the first time in years, Sally said.

But, she said, the town’s utility poles really weren’t wired properly for all of that, so this year Progress Energy has been rewiring many of the outlets, with town council and the Littleton Lions Club splitting the $1,700 cost.

Then Mosca stepped forward with another offering to the town. He called in February, telling Sally his company was taking down a big Christmas tree from location in Cary.

‘The tree costs $10,000 just eight years ago,” she said. “They were going to throw it away. I called him back and said we wanted it, but I said ‘George, I don’t know how we’ll ever get this tree up.’” So, Mosca sent his crews to town again this year to put up the snowflakes and to erect the giant tree now standing in the middle of town.

“He’s sort of adopted us, and he loves to see the town look pretty. People have been absolutely wonderful in writing him and thanking him. I would love to honor him somehow, I don’t know what to do, how to do it, I’m hoping he’ll be able to be here Nov. 23. If he is, I know we’d recognize him and honor him.”

That Nov. 23 she spoke of is what Sally hopes will become an annual tradition of caroling and lighting the town’s new Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving.

She said. Folks who are interested can meet at 5 p.m. in the fellowship hall of Littleton United Methodist Church.

“We’re going to start there and we’re going to stroll down Main Street singing carols,” she said. “We’ll end at the tree … and we’ll have the big lighting of the tree, which will probably be somewhere between 5:30 and 6.

It’s like an old-fashioned caroling time. Whoever feels like they can come and walk that far will come.” She said folks who can’t walk that far are free to go ahead and get a spot at the tree waiting for the procession down Main Street to get there.

But, come 10 people or 500, she said the event wouldn’t have happened if not for George Mosca’s donations to the town.

“I hope people in town will write to him and thank him,” she said.

His address is George@moscadesign.com or George Mosca; Mosca Design, Inc.; 8450 Garvey Drive; Raleigh, N.C. 27616