The Twelve Days of Christmas - Day 11

On the eleventh day of Christmas, I'm sitting here thinking about Christmases past. I saw a comment my niece posted on Facebook about my dad and his Christmas decorations. Dad decorated in a big way. He was creative, he was handy with tools, and Santa was his muse. We had a Merry Christmas sign that stretched between our house and Grandma's house next door. He had lights on the roof in the shape of bells and candy canes that blinked off and on. There was a motorized reindeer that pulled Santa up and down a chimney Dad added to our front porch. There was a large nativity scene. But the two big crowd-pleasers - and there were crowds, people always came to look around, Dad was even in the Dispatch once - anyway, the two big crowd pleasers were the Whirligig and the Star.

The Whirligig was a big red boxy thing - well, red on the base and plexiglass on the top. It was about four or five feet wide, four or five feet tall and about two feet deep. In it were turntables that whirled around - one was a carousel of white reindeer being ridden by elves. I seem to remember dolls dressed up in costumes from other countries, spinning around. My niece also remembers ice skaters. The Whirligig was something to behold, I tell you, powered by an old washing machine motor.

The Star was a big three-dimensional 5-point star that dad perched atop a 40-foot tower anchored to the back of our house...and then he lit it up. You could see that star for miles. My brother and I would watch for it whenever we were out in the car with Dad, trying to be the first to spot it.

At Christmastime, or really, almost anytime, "less is more" had no meaning for my dad. For him, bigger was always better and if you could make it move and light it up, it was perfect.