Residents at Sunnyside in Harrisonburg gathered on December 3 for a ritual that has quietly become the unofficial opening of the holiday season on the campus. In the Highlands lobby, just after daybreak, the familiar work began. The tree, a tall and timeworn evergreen that has presided over more than three decades of celebrations, was lifted piece by piece from storage and assembled with the steady patience that has defined this tradition since its earliest years. It is not a hurried job. It is a job done with respect.
By 7 o’clock in the morning, Robin Golliday, director of residential living, said that staff was already at work. Five hours pass before it stands whole again, a reminder that some rituals endure only because people are willing to meet them with care. Residents arrive later, and in about an hour they transform the bare branches into something warm and bright.
Among them this year was Marvel Dunn, a Highlands resident who has attended 26 of these gatherings. She has lived at Sunnyside that long and carries the memory of this tradition the way people carry old stories that still matter. She remembers the ornaments before they dulled a little with age, remembers the hands that hung them, remembers the soft laughter and the small silences of earlier years. Her presence is a link between what this tradition was and what it continues to be.
The ornaments remain the tree’s quiet wonder. Every piece was donated by someone who once called Sunnyside home. Glass bells that traveled through moves and losses. Felt figures stitched long ago by hands that worked slowly and with intention. Small wooden animals carved on front steps in summers that feel like another lifetime. Together they build an unspoken archive. Even when their owners no longer walk the campus, their stories stay, held gently on the branches.
At the top stands the tree’s angel, approaching her 30th year. She has watched this lobby fill and empty through seasons of change, watched the lights flicker on each December, watched residents lean into the moment as if to steady themselves on memory.
There are other trees across Sunnyside’s campus this time of year, each cheerfully lit and well loved. But the Highlands tree holds a different kind of weight. It is the keeper of the past. It asks people to pause. It reminds them that community is inherited and tended, shaped by those who arrived long before and kept alive by those who remain.
There were treats and punch. A little laughter. The comfortable hum of neighbors working side by side. Nothing extraordinary happened, and yet everything did. When the lights clicked on, the tree glowed the way a remembered place glows, steady and full, carrying the quiet truth that tradition is not just decoration. It is the memory of people who cared enough to leave something behind.
