Family lights up Decatur each Christmas

   

    In the mid-1980s, a Decatur couple and their teenage daughter started decorating their front yard with a festive display every Christmas.

    Now, more than three decades later, the annual tradition— which has spread to include the entire town of Decatur and beyond — is continuing into a third generation.

    The huge, multicolor displays cover the town’s entrance, courthouse walls and lawn, local banks, and other buildings. A fence near the volunteer fire department is adorned with a giant, fire-breathing water dragon, its flames being extinguished by a fire engine. Near the police department, there’s a cop catching a bad elf, and on the exterior of the justice court building stands Santa Clause, checking off his “naughty or nice” list. Over by the post office, a reindeer rock band reminds passersby “Christmas Rocks.”  

    Down the highway, an expansive manger scene — complete with a hovering star — fills a field in front of the Newton County sheriff’s office. Just across the road, a race car lights up an automotive business.

    “It began with one display in our yard,” recalls Merita Cherry, who started the tradition with her husband, Danny. “Eventually, the display got so big Danny wanted to move it into town to share it.”

    The Cherrys got their first display — a sled with reindeer — at a salvage yard in Sevierville, Tenn. Then they repaired the display, modifying it from 10 reindeer to six.

    Each year, the Cherrys and their daughter, Kay, would add different items to the displays.

    Then, in the 1990s, the young woman met Tim Chambers, and he became part of the tradition.

    “When Kay and I married, I married into the family, but I married into the town,” Tim Chambers,  a Scott County native, recalls. “We love Decatur. We love what it’s about – the small town atmosphere.”

    Soon, the couple were right in the middle of helping the Cherrys decorate.

    “Mama would cook supper and we would have zipper tie parties,” Kay Chambers recalls. “Daddy would have all the lights already on them, so we would have to go around and cut the ties off.”

    Eventually, Kay and Tim had a son, Malcolm, and he joined the decorating crew.

    “I honestly don’t remember not being involved,” recalls Malcolm “Mac” Chambers, now in his late teens. “But they really started letting me help out more when I was about 14, being a gopher mainly: ‘Go get this, go get that.'”

    The ideas for the displays come from “whoever’s in the most imaginative mood that day,” he says. “Whoever gets a good idea. That’s pretty much it.”

    Now, the young man is fully involved in the decorating process. His grandfather taught him how to weld, and he even came up with the idea for the “Reindeer Trucking” display (a tractor trailer) from an old children’s television show.

    “Literally, Optimus Prime,” he says, laughing. “I’m not joking. I got the idea from the way his truck was in the original cartoon in the 1980s. That’s where it all came from.”

    He says he enjoys the technical aspects — design and troubleshooting —as well as spending time with his family as they decorate.

    “It’s hard to say what my favorite part is,” he says. “Because it’s all fun. And actually getting my family together is an act of Congress, just about.”

    Merita and Danny Cherry are retired, but she serves as District 3 Election Commissioner for Newton County. Kay Chambers is a dispatcher with the Newton County Emergency Management Agency and the county’s deputy coroner, while her husband works for the Mississippi Department of Transportation. Mac Chambers, meanwhile, is a student at East Central Community College. With the exception of Merita Cherry, they all serve on the Decatur Volunteer Fire Department.

    “This gives a chance to come together,”  Kay Chambers says.

Bigger and better

    With the displays getting bigger every year, the decorators are running out of space in Decatur. Last year, they expanded by putting up a full color manger scene at Pine Bluff Church, at the end of Turkey Creek Road outside Decatur.

    “We ended up having enough material to build two manger scenes,” Mac Chambers says. “Well, there was nowhere in town to put a second one. Pine Bluff Church has an opening right in the middle that’s just the right size.”

    A new display stands on the hill in the Cherry’s front yard this year. The laser light display is based on the song “Grandma Got Run Over by a  Reindeer,” with a reindeer driving a monster truck (complete with a Christmas tree in the back) over a walker-using grandma. Another new display is a 9-foot ice cream cone and a slide with penguins sliding down it.

     The annual tradition continues to draw raves. When Pat O’Neill, the town’s mayor, moved to Decatur from New Orleans about a decade ago, he’d never seen one family go to such lengths to celebrate the Christmas season.

    “I’d see individual families decorate their yards, but nothing like this,” he said. “They go above and beyond. It’s not about them, it’s about the community. It’s exceptional what they do.”

    State Rep. Randy Rushing, a Decatur native, agrees.

    “They fill a void in sprucing up the town for Christmas,” he said. “I honestly believe if they weren’t doing it, it wouldn’t get done, because the town certainly doesn’t have the time. Somehow, they find the time to do it, and I’m so thankful they do.”

    For the Cherrys and Chambers, the effort is worth every minute, because it brings joy to so many people, and not just those from Decatur.

    “It’s amazing how people you may not see for a whole year, but come Christmas time, they’re going to want to know ‘Where’s this at?’, ‘Where’s that at?’, ‘Are you putting this out this year?'”  Mac Chambers says. “I have friends from Collinsville and Meehan tell me, ‘I came last year — is it going to be up this year?’ So it is definitely worth the trip.”