Our Gargantuan Wreath

What do you say we pause, in the midst of the madness of the holidays, to honor those who played small parts in turning neighborhood Christmas displays into a coast-to-coast competition.

My late dad, for one.

The man was many things. Father, son, husband, one-time carnival barker. But he could barely change a light bulb, let alone be trusted to create a Christmas masterpiece in our small New Jersey town.

That didn't stop him.

When it came to outdoor Christmas decorations, we did what most unimaginative families did in the early 1960s: My parents outlined our brick ranch in colored lights and strung more around an evergreen that stood in the front yard.

Nice. But not memorable. Until my dad decided to create something that would dazzle our neighbors, that is. His announcement went something like this:

"I'm making a wreath," he declared at dinner one night a few weeks before Christmas.

"We get one every year from the church," my mother replied.

"I mean a big one. A giant wreath. For the front of the house."

"How big?" she asked.

"Almost as tall as the house," he said. "And I'm going to build it."

My mother looked skeptical. Dad had never built anything.

My father said he planned to hang his stupendous wreath from the roof and frame the bay window with it.

That's when my mother became alarmed. That oversized window was the centerpiece of our house. She'd recently read a magazine article with a decorating tip that had turned that window into something very special: She filled clear bottles with water and added a few drops of red or green vegetable dye. Placed in a window, the effect was twofold: The house was awash with Christmas sunlight during the day, and it projected colorful, seasonal glow out into the night.

Mom was the first in our neighborhood to place a row of liquor bottles with tinted water on her windowsills. Jackie Kennedy had done something similar at the White House, she claimed. Of course, back then, women were always claiming their latest dubious fashion statement or household innovation had the first lady's imprimatur.

My dad could build a wreath, my mother said, but he'd better not block the view of her bottles.

The next Saturday, Dad came home with wooden planks piled in the back of the station wagon.

"Stand back, kids," he ordered as he began unloading his lumber. "I'm about to make the biggest wreath this town has ever seen."

With that, he got out a box of nails and began to hammer the planks together until they made something approximating a circle.

What my father created – as best my younger brother and I can recollect – was a hexadecagon, a 16-sided polygon.

The finished product was slightly lopsided. Decidedly mammoth.

With the frame finished, my father grabbed clippers and began chopping greenery from the fir tree near the street. He took so many branches that the sad evergreen was left with gaping holes.

"No one will be looking at the tree, trust me," he said breathlessly as he carried the last of the boughs to the wooden almost-a-circle.

Next he stapled the greens to the wood. Then he got out the big, colorful lights that once adorned the denuded tree and attached them to the structure.

The wreath was much heavier than he expected, and he hollered for us to help as he struggled to right it.

Hanging that obese wreath was clearly out of the question. It would have to lean against the house.

My father tried to hide his disappointment.

He fed an extension cord out of a front window and plugged it in.

We gaped in amazement. There was no denying, the wreath was magnificent.

Dad immediately declared that there would be no outlining of the house in lights that year. That would detract from the beauty of his wreath. For a few glorious weeks, our gigantic, multicolored circle was the showpiece of the neighborhood. Cars slowed as they passed. People stared.

Then, in early January, my dad carefully dismantled the wreath and put it in the basement for safekeeping.

The wreath went back up Christmas after Christmas. But a funny thing happened. Inspired perhaps, by Dad's display, our neighbors began adding life-size reindeer and waving Santas and snowmen to theirs. As the Christmas tableaux on our street grew, our amazing wreath seemed to shrink.

By the time we moved in 1968, it was a minor attraction and a major headache.

When Dad suggested bringing it with us to the new house, he got a steely stare from my mother.

The wreath stayed. We left.