Decorating for Christmas

To say my interest in putting out Christmas yard ornaments and outdoor lights is an obsession would be an overstatement. But putting out a manger scene and stringing up four dozen or more strands of lights has become the norm.

Steven Bender

Perhaps I wouldn’t remember it on my own, but photos from my childhood help me “remember” that our family had a Christmas tree early on. Those were the days when we had silver tinsel and the original colored ceramic lights one can now find in antique stores.

The decorations in our house during those days were simple. Possibly a cedar tree or later on, an artificial one. We still have an early version of angel chimes, the table piece with lighted candles that spins an angel on top. And one of my favorite pieces of indoor decorations we still have is the white plastic wind-up organ and angel that play “Silent Night.”

One of my favorite memories, however, comes from going to town with my parents and being in the Town Plaza shopping area. In those days, the parking lot light poles were all decorated with colored tinsel Christmas trees. Blue, red, yellow, etc. I wish they still did that! Whatever happened to those trees?

At some point, my dad decided to put some of the colored ceramic bulb lights in a Colorado blue spruce tree we had in the front yard. A year or two later, he lit up a second tree, then later a third.

By 1996, Dad got patterns for Christmas yard ornaments: manger, Mary, Joseph, crib, angels and the three wise men he always jokingly called the “three wise guys” while we were setting them up.

Dad passed away in 2007, and every year since, I’ve been putting out a manger scene. It’s changed, though. His original cutouts he hand-painted have become old and are falling apart. In keeping with this tradition, about eight years ago, I started replacing the old scene decorations with new ones. There’s a reason I work on decorations during the hot summer. I’m even working on some plywood trees at the moment.

So each year, I try to add something to the yard. Plywood snowman. Plywood deer couple. Tons of lights. Just something different or fun.

For two nights this winter, I’ve been asked to move the manger scene to my church, Trinity Lutheran in Egypt Mills. The church will participate in the Christmas Country Church Tour, and they want my manger scene on the hillside. It’ll be a chore to move everything just for Dec. 12 and 13, but it’ll be fun to see.

Maybe this winter I’ll head to Gatlinburg, Tennessee, to see their displays up and down the streets and get some more inspiration for future yard additions.