Hamburg Area High School’s Student Council introduced the holiday spirit theme, class warfare, for the 2023 season. Students participated all week in the spirit days to gain points for their class to hopefully win presents at the pep rally. To kick off the holiday spirit, Student Council introduced the hallway decorating competition where each class picked a theme and decorated their designated hallway. On Friday, December 15, each class had 90 minutes to decorate their hallway. When decorating was completed, the custodial staff viewed each hallway and ranked them. Seniors, with their theme Christmas in the Jungle, won first place. Juniors came in second, Sophomores in third, and Freshmen finished in fourth place.

     Erica Gerner, a junior at HAHS, participated in preparing and decorating the junior hallway. As a class officer, Erica was automatically included in helping with this event. The juniors picked Christmas Tree Farm as their theme, by searching for ideas on Pinterest and Google. When they found Christmas Tree Farm as a theme they thought it was a unique and fun option. From there, the class officers gathered a bunch of other juniors to help prepare decorations and decorate on the day of the challenge. The juniors continued looking at ideas on Pinterest, but they tried their best to think of items they would see at a Christmas tree farm and recreate them to put up in the hallway. Erica says she had a really fun time doing this with friends, but a little more time might have been nice. She would definitely participate again next year if it happens again with better preparation. Seeing the hallway complete was Erica’s favorite part of the whole challenge. To do better next year, she says it would be a good idea to look at the space they have in the hallway and have a better understanding of the layout when creating things for the hallway.

     Tia Adam, a sophomore at HAHS, helped her class prepare and decorate their hallway. After bouncing around ideas her class decided on The Polar Express as their theme. Tia was able to get involved with helping through her class’s event committee and she received an email asking for helpers. Preparing was chaotic, Tia says, because they only had up to ten students helping throughout the entire process. They only met six times during flex and most of that time was spent making snowflakes. Her class also made hot chocolate cups, presents, and a big train that had all of their homeroom teachers’ faces on it. Tia had a lot of preparing and decorating her hallway. She says she would love to do this again, but next time she hopes to make a lot more decorations. Her favorite part was coming up with fun ideas for the hallway and being able to execute them. The best idea they had was the train with pictures of teachers in Tia’s opinion. Tia does not think her class was properly prepared for the day of decorating. At the end of the competition, their hallway lacked decorations in some areas and had an empty entrance. She believes this is because her class spent a lot of time making the train. Next year she would like to prepare more properly and use their time wisely.