WASHINGTON – Washington County residents are not about to let residents of that other Washington forget that the holiday season is here.
About 400 Western Marylanders signed and sent to the capital city a Christmas card a quarter as long as a basketball court.
The 4-by-24-foot greeting – adorned with Washington County landmarks and a cartoon Santa – accompanied the Capitol Holiday Tree from Hagerstown to the District. The card is being displayed in front of Rep. Roscoe Bartlett’s office until New Year’s Day.
“We wanted to send a card down as a community,” said Paulette Sprinkle, program coordinator for the Hagerstown/Washington County Convention and Visitors Bureau. “We thought it was a wonderful way to send holiday greetings.”
The card arrived Monday and stretches along the hallway just outside Bartlett’s office to the neighboring Employee Identification Office.
“It’s got to be the biggest Christmas card around the Capitol,” said Bartlett, R-Frederick.
This was the first time the county had ever sent such a card, but Sprinkle said she would like to make it an annual event.
The card traveled by truck with the Capitol Holiday Tree, a 75-foot Douglas fir displayed at the west side of the Capitol. The tree, from Plumas National Forest in California, stopped over in Hagerstown last weekend. It will be decorated Dec. 13 with about 3,000 hand-made ornaments and 5,000 lights, Sprinkle said.
Cartoon illustrations on the card show Santa Claus driving a truck carrying a Christmas tree. Above Santa is the caption: “From One Washington To The Other … Happy Holidays.”
The card also shows drawings of the historic Jonathan Hager House and the Rail House in Hagerstown and the Washington Monument and the Capitol in Washington. The card was designed by Mark Kretzer, a partner at DMG Studios of Hagerstown. -30-