Chilton Medical Center employees have kept up their newest traditions of having milk and cookies with Santa and putting up a Christmas tree specially decorated in honor of our troops.

The night’s celebrations started with a an opening song from the First United Methodist Church Children’s Choir and was followed with a snack time for the kids and Santa in the hospitals cafeteria.

“Both of these events were things that we started last year, and we are keeping the tradition going again this year. We are planning to have these celebrations for as long as we have troops overseas,” event coordinator Vanessa McKinney said.

Several children and community members showed up to see Santa and all of the children were sent home with reindeer food, which was a small bag of oatmeal.

For further entertainment during the milk and cookies with Santa event, community members gathered together to create a choir where they sang Christmas carols.

The Christmas tree decorated for troops was started last year after several members of the Chilton Medical team expressed that they had family overseas.

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To honor them the members brought red, white and blue ornaments and decorated the tree to be fully patriotic.

“This is something that we all enjoy doing and with the milk and cookies with Santa the children have really had a lot of fun.” McKinney said.