Fabricating Friday’s ‘Festival of Trees’ to Fantastic Form

ZANESVILLE, Ohio – Each holiday season the Zanesville Muskingum County Chamber of Commerce holds a fundraiser that auctions off Christmas decorations loaded with goods and services from local businesses that incentivize the purchases. 

The auction, better known as The Festival of Trees, will be held Friday at the Zanesville Muskingum County Convention and Visitors Bureau. Chamber President Dana Matz took time to explain some of the intricacies of the one of a kind event.

“It’s our 31st year of the Festival of Trees,” Matz said. “We have folks setting up today. The auction will be on Friday, December 1st, at 9 a.m. and running live on AM 1240 and FM 102.3 until 6 p.m.

During the pandemic, the fundraising event was strictly a remote auction where people viewed items for bid online and placed their bids online or by phone during the allotted time segment. All items get numbered and auctioned during four, 15-minute segments each hour.

“We expect that website to be active on Wednesday afternoon,” Matz said. “And that is zmchamber.com or whiznews.com. They’ll be able to see the times, the entries, the incentives of who has provided these and a photo of that.”

Thursday, the building located at Fifth and Shinnick Street will be open from noon to 5 p.m. for bidders to see firsthand the items they can bid on. Bidding can be done via telephone, online or live and in person. The telephone bids can be placed by calling (740) 450-1990 during the auction.