The Holiday Season Special

By Kyle Smith

As with many things at this time of year, this column will be devoted to the Christmas season. My columns were originally intended for the warm weather walkers, joggers, bicyclists and others among us who take the time to enjoy seeing this village more closely. While the weather may not be as warm as some other months to enjoy this village's architecture and design, this is a unique time to view the village.

Most homes in Garden City have some very nice decorations and some blocks are quite pretty with a number of the homes having Christmas lights and displays. Additionally, there are a few homes that really go out of their way to create very impressive scenes. At this time of year, a number of these should be visited since they are really works of art in their own fashion.

It would be nice to take a family tour of the village's many lovely homes during this holiday season. These short tours will not lead to the inevitable "Are we there yet?"

There are, of course, displays outside of Garden City that certainly rival our examples in glitz. My family used to annually visit a major display on Jerusalem Avenue in Uniondale. As with most of the displays of this style, there generally is no central theme.

Nationally, there are a few homes that literally spend many thousands, in some cases tens of thousands of dollars in developing huge displays. These have occasionally been the subjects of news reports, ranging from the motivation of the owners to the reactions of their neighbors.

Garden City residents generally opt for the more traditional displays. In some cases, much of the block has been decorated. While each individual home is lovely, the overall effect when most of a block is decorated is spectacular. A fine example of this is on St. Paul's Place. The entrance at Oxford Boulevard is framed by two outstanding displays at either end.

Inside the oval, one side has a good number of homes with displays and the overall effect is quite nice. One home in particular has a great display, including a very large evergreen covered with colored lights. It very well may be the finest in the village. There is a fine example of large evergreen with white-only lights on Oxford Boulevard between Stewart Avenue and the LIRR.

Several other places in town have also utilized their evergreens to produce large-scale Christmas light displays. While nowhere near the size and scope of the Rockefeller Center or the EAB trees, they are impressive as individual and family efforts and are huge in comparison to the homes they front. (Imagine if the Rockefeller or EAB trees were larger than the surrounding buildings!)

Some homeowners have done a fine job in utilizing the deciduous trees in their front yards. Festooned with miniature lights, they make for very impressive displays. Ingenuity shows off on the corner of Euston and Newmarket, where one industrious and creative homeowner has brilliantly used star burst (or snowflake) style lights throughout a large deciduous tree. Very effective! The smaller sized fruit trees that are popular in front yard landscapes are beautiful when decorated. A good example of this is on Second St. just off Rockaway, on the short dead end by the Cherry Valley Golf Course.

Since the homes of Garden City are so picturesque, many owners effectively use the house, by spotlighting it, in their Christmas decorative efforts. There are many fine examples of this technique - often the larger homes of the Central and Estates are good ones to look for. The lower number streets in the Central have several fine examples. Wreaths are traditionally Garden City and they range in size and color; when combined with the spot lighting, a very effective appearance is created.

Prancing reindeer appears to be an ever more popular front yard display, often in concert with their companion sleigh. Some of these reindeer (we haven't seen a Rudolph!) are lit with miniature white lights. Whether in wire, wicker, twigs or other material composition, they usually show well.

I would like to take this opportunity to wish everyone in Garden City a happy and healthy season!