Posts Tagged ‘Christmas’


Since 1986, Boy Scout Troop 68 of Melrose has held a Christmas Party. The parties were first held in someone’s home but sometimes the parties were held in other venues, especially when the troop’s membership began to grow. A few parties were held at the city hall. This year’s party was held in a church facility and followed the troop’s last court of honor for the year. We invited the second year Webelos to attend the party.

Each Scout was asked to bring a snack for the party The troop provided the pizzas and the beverages. No one went home hungry from this activity. We had food left over.

The first activity was the gift exchange. All the gifts were placed in the middle of the tables. Scouts took turns shaking a pair of dice. If he shook doubles he picked a gift from the center of the table to place in front of him. Once each Scout or adult leader had received a gift the real fun began.

In the past we would open our gifts at this point to see what they were. This year, the Scouts voted to try something different. The gifts would not be opened until the end of the game. Participants had to guess what was in the packages and determine which package they wanted to try to receive.

The Scouts set a ten minute time for the game. Once the time began the dice were passed around the table. Each participant would shake the dice. If he shook doubles he could trade the gift in front of him for a gift in front of another Scout. Whatever gift was in front of you at the end of the ten minutes would be yours to take home. Most Scouts liked what they received but I did notice a couple trades going on after the game ended.

The Scouts moved onto various other games during the evening. Shortly after 9:00 pm we watched a movie. The Scouts choose Home Alone for their entertainment this year. There were a couple Scouts who had not seen this movie yet.

We wrapped up the festivities around 11:30 that evening. A winter storm was on the way and we wanted everyone to be home before it began. The Scouts had a lot of fun during this last troop activity for the year.

I have been collecting the Hallmark Scoutmaster Snoopy ornaments for about 15 years now so I was looking forward to picking up this year’s ornament today at my local Hallmark store. I saw the ornament online a couple weeks ago and it looked like a great addition to the collection. According to the Hallmark website:

Scoutmaster Snoopy and his Beagle Scouts know that great days are ones spent fishing with friends. Celebrate the timeless tradition of scouting with this cute Peanuts Christmas tree ornament featuring Snoopy, Woodstock and their yellow feathered friends.

I thought it was a great idea for the design. I was really looking forward to buying two of them, like I usually do every year. I walked into the store, gazed at all the various ornaments on display, and then found Scoutmaster Snoopy. I guess you could say the feeling I felt when I first saw it was… disappointment.

The design was great, but the ornament was very small. And I do mean small. It looked to be about half the size of last year’s ornament which was already a bit smaller then the year before. All the other ornaments on the display wall looked to about about the normal size that we have come to expect from Hallmark. So why was this Snoopy ornament so much smaller than the others?

By the way, this year’s ornament was the same price as last year’s ornament, even though it was so much smaller.

When I got home I took out the last two previous years ornaments to see just how much smaller this year’s was. The feeling began to change from disappointment to a little bit of anger. The 2022 model seemed to be about 40% smaller than the 2021 model. Take a look at the pictures below and see for yourself.

If this is how Hallmark plans to treat this series in the future then I may be done collecting Scoutmaster Snoopy ornaments. Yes, I bought this year’s decoration but I only bought one, not the usual two. I could not bring myself to buy a second one because I felt like I was being ripped off by Hallmark.

What do you think of this year’s ornament? Do you plan to buy one? What do you think of the size of it? Leave a comment and let me know if you like this year’s “The Peanuts® Gang Fishing Friends Ornament”.

Thank you for stopping by A Scoutmaster’s Blog.

I have been collecting the Hallmark Keepsake ornaments featuring Scout Leader Snoopy for quite a few years. Hallmark has been creating one for each Christmas holiday season for nearly two decades. I think I missed the first one or two but I have collected each one since 2007. In fact, once I discover a new one is for sale I usually post the news in this blog. In this video of My Scouting Collection I show all the Beagle Scout Snoopy ornaments in my collection along with a special Walt Disney ornament I found featuring Donald Duck and his nephews.

Do you collect these ornaments? Have you seen them in the stores? Which ones do you own?

This is the fifth video in the series and can be watch at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXQwSVrU23k

If you enjoy watching these videos please hit the LIKE button on the YouTube page and subscribe to the channel. Thank you for watching.

It is that time of year once again. Hallmark has released its 2020 ornaments for the holiday season. Once again, they have created a special Scouting themed ornament featuring Scout Leader Snoopy, the world famous Beagle Scout, along with a few of his troop members. I believe this is the fourteenth year we have seen an ornament in this series. (If I am wrong, leave a comment.)

As you can see from the photo, canoeing is this year’s featured activity. This is the third time that water sports has been chosen as a theme, although this is the first time that portaging a canoe has been featured. As you can see, I do not believe Woodstock and his pals are offering much help with this portage.

Have you been to Hallmark yet to purchase your ornament? What do you think of this year’s design? Leave a comment and let us know.

Photos from hallmark.com.

My new Hallmark ornaments arrived in the mail on Friday. That makes thirteen years of Beagle Scout Snoopy ornaments in the collection. I know I do not have the earliest ones. but maybe someday I will. This year had the nice bonus of a Scout Leader Donald Duck and his nephew Scouts.

Some people have been wondering what the collection looks like so I though I would share a picture of it with you. The sad thing is that the biggest one of the collection was only $19.99 when I bought it back in 2007. Now look at how small this year’s ornament is, and the price was $17.99. A much smaller ornament for nearly the same cost. I guess that is the way things are these days.

How many of these do you own? Do you plan to collect all of them?

Earlier this week I discovered that Hallmark was selling the 2019 Snoopy Beagle Scout Christmas ornament. Since I collect them I had to place an order for a couple of them, but that was not the only thing I ended up ordering.

It seems that Hallmark decided to release a second Scouting themed ornament this year. This one features Donald Duck as the Scout Leader and his three nephews as the Scouts. The ornament is based on the 1938 Disney short film called The Good Scouts. If you have not seen it yet you should look it up. Donald is not the best Scout leader, but his nephews are not the best Scouts either.

I think is it cool that Hallmark released two Scouting themed ornaments in one year. I like it even more that one is based on the Peanuts characters and the other is based on Disney characters. I wonder what they have planned for next year? Maybe something from Follow Me Boys?

Do you already have your 2019 ornaments? Do you plan to buy them for yourself or as a present for someone this Christmas?

The Boy Scouts of Melrose Area Troop 68 have held a Christmas party every year since the early 1980’s. It is an activity which is well attended because we have a lot of fun. Thirteen of the fifteen troop members attended this year’s party which was held on Saturday, December 15th. Four second year Webelos Scouts also attended the event.

The evening began at 5:30 pm with a supper of tacos. Most of the Scouts were quite hungry since they had spend the day downhill skiing at Andes Ski Resort near Alexandria.

The first activity was the gift exchange. Each Scout who wished to participate bought a gift valued from $12 to $15. All the Scouts participated. Each wrapped gift was placed in the center of the room. The Scouts took turns rolling dice. When they rolled doubles they chose a gift. Once all the gifts were chosen they were unwrapped. Then the real fun began. For the next fifteen minutes we continued to roll dice. When a Scout rolled doubles he could swap his gift with someone else. At the end of the fifteen minutes everyone “received” the gift they had in front of them.

Like every year, there were a few gifts that were very popular and moved around the room quite often. They were also a couple not so popular gifts that also were traded when the chance presented itself. I also participated in the exchange. Once there were only a few minutes of game time left, I became serious about which gift I wanted to take home. I was lucky enough to shake doubles with a little over a minute left, and even luckier to have no one shake doubles to take my chosen prize away from me.

The next activity was unwrapping a gift wrapped with duct tape, while wearing garden gloves. Once again, the Scouts rolled dice to have a chance to unwrap the box. Until the next Scout rolled doubles, that is. The game when the final box was unwrapped. Oh yeah, I did not tell you there were smaller wrapped boxes within the larger boxes.

The final game was a Twister tournament. This was followed by a movie which was a really good high school sports film based on a true story. The Scouts really caught caught up in the movie, even cheering for the team during the final event. The Scouts went home after the movie finished.

Does your troop hold a Christmas outing? What do you do? Leave a note about it in the comments section below.

I bought my first digital camera in 2004. I was going to Philmont Scout Ranch with the troop and thought this would be a good trip to start using digital photography. I have been using a digital camera ever since that trip.

I soon began using the digital photos to make slideshows of the troop events and activities. It was fairly easy to create a slideshow using the programs of the Mac Pro computer I owned. The next step was to burn the slideshows to a DVD so I could watch them on the television.

As Christmas approached I decided to copy the pictures to a compact disc and print one for each of the Boy Scouts in the troop. The slideshow DVDs soon followed. The Boy Scouts and their families seem to enjoy watching the shows so I kept doing it each Christmas.

It is now the year 2018. I have finished this year’s annual DVDs. Once again there will be a DVD of the slideshows, but the yearly photo collection has grown too large to put on CDs anymore. I take thousands of photos each year so the collection is now burned as a data DVD. This year’s photo collection was over 3 GB, and that does not include the photos of the trip to the Summit high adventure base. The data DVD does include some short videos taken during some of the monthly events.

I hope the Boy Scouts and their families enjoy watching the slideshows and looking at the pictures. It does take several evenings to create the DVD package each year. But I think it is well worth it.

PS: after posting this article and viewing the picture I noticed a mistake on the DVDs. Do you see it?