Santa’s Neighbor

This is an essay written by Caroline's only granddaughter Ashlynn, who is 10. This paper won first place in it’s division district wide, then went on to receive an honorable mention at the county level.

Santa's Neighbor

Sometimes I can compare my grandma to Mrs. Claus. It is a riot at my grandma’s house at Christmas. Let’s just say the streets are jam packed with cars and there are crowds of people. You would not believe what happens at their neighborhood.

At my grandma’s, Christmas is a BIG season. It takes her an entire two weeks to decorate her house. (And that’s just the inside of her house!) The outside takes her one week (with the help of my grandpa). It looks like the North Pole got dropped off at their house! She even decorates her bathroom! (It’s creepy with all those Santa’s staring at you while you’re trying to go to the bathroom.)

When we all get together for Christmas, it’s a tradition that we go and look at lights. There isn’t a house in their neighborhood that doesn’t have lights. My grandma’s not the only one that has a house that looks like the North Pole got dropped off there. It is CRAZY in their neighborhood! There are so many lights. People sell hot chocolate, there are bands; it’s fun. There are even award winning houses there.

You can smell the musty scent of old lights that have been lying in the garage for 359 days a year, and freshly mown grass. You can hear the faint tinkling of bells, and fuses burning out. Or taste the hot chocolate dancing on your tongue, and feel the wind beating against your face. Sometimes you see horse drawn carriages or a little golf cart driving around that’s decked out with lights. It if rains, that’s not stopping people; they just hop in their cars instead of walking.

I love it when I go to my grandma’s for Christmas because I get to look at her neighborhood lights. It definitely looks like Santa’s neighborhood. This year has been hard for us, because this year my grandma got a disease called A.L.S., so she wasn’t able to decorate as much, but that wasn’t stopping her! Since we knew that this year was going to be her last year, my uncle and dad wanted to give her the best Christmas present ever! So, they took a wire and attached it to a tree. With the other end, they attached a light pole across the street and built a miniature sleigh. Then they set the sleigh on top of the string and put some teddy bears and some L.E.D. lights on it. It was actually pretty cool! If you pulled a string that they put on it, it would fly across the street like Santa’s real sleigh! Like I said, since this year would be her last year, they wanted to send her out with a BANG! So even though last Christmas was her last Christmas, we knew that the lights were certainly staying there.