It’s easy to feel the Christmas spirit when entering The Birches neighborhood.
At night, each of its 15 homes features the same decorations of an 8-foot white metal Christmas tree with strands of sparkling white lights and a star, and a lighted wreath with a red ribbon adorning each mailbox.
The overall sight makes the small neighborhood located near the very end of East Park Avenue look like an oasis of holiday cheer.
“We say every time we turn in, it’s like a winter wonderland, and we think it’s real pretty,” said Vicki Morgan, who is president of The Birches Homeowners Association.
Vicki Morgan, left, president of The Birches Homeowners Association, and Patty Brock sit at the entrance of their neighborhood. For the past three years, residents of The Birches decorate each of their homes with an 8-foot metal lighted Christmas tree, which was Brock’s idea.
While each house in the neighborhood has put up a lighted wreath every year, the metal trees were added three years ago.
The idea for the addition to the Christmas decorations came from Patty Brock, who resides in The Birches. It came to her while traveling on U.S. 82 toward Winona during the holiday season.
“I noticed several lit up metal trees, and I just had been thinking how pretty that would be” at The Birches, she said.
One day, Brock went to Big Lots and found enough of the same 8-foot metal Christmas trees to light up each home in her neighborhood.
Each year, residents of The Birches get together for a Christmas party and an annual Homeowners Association meeting in December. Brock had mentioned the year before at the meeting that the neighborhood should do something during Christmas “to set our area apart.”
After Brock spotted the decorations and talked to Morgan, the trees were purchased.
“I think we just went and bought them on faith,” said Morgan. “And then I emailed everybody, and everybody agreed to do it.”
The Christmas decorations at The Birches are on display from Dec. 1 to Jan.1, and the lights come on each evening at around 5 p.m. — or whenever the timers recognize “dusk,” which varies for some but is within a 15-minute time frame.
“I just love for 5 o’clock to come and watch them come on,” said Brock. “One timer may think it’s dusk at 4:30 and another at 5. It’s fun to watch them slowly come on.”
The trees take about 30 minutes to an hour to assemble, depending on how tangled the strands of lights are or any other technical issues that can occur with Christmas decorations after being in storage for a year.
Morgan and her husband, Noel, assembled four of the trees this year, including the two at the entrance to The Birches.
“And we did not have a fight,” Morgan said with a laugh. “It’s exciting when you see them going up, and I am always sad when it’s over, and we take them down.”
After Thanksgiving, the trees start going up.
“The Muses across the street had their tree up first,” said Morgan.
Then after the trees at the homes of the Morgans and the Brocks went up, “they all started appearing.”
“It’s simple elegance — that’s what I think it looks like,” said Brock.
The Birches residents are a close-knit group.
“We just feel like we’re a little community within Greenwood, and we just love The Birches,” said Morgan.
One of the Christmas trees shines brightly at night at the entrance of The Birches.
In addition to the annual Christmas party and meeting, the residents hold a get-together in the spring, such as a crawfish boil, and they dress up for Halloween and gather in front of Brock’s home to give out candy to trick-or-treaters. Some of the women in the neighborhood started community raised-bed gardens a few years ago.
“We’re all real close, because we’re all good friends,” said Brock. “We just love our little area. I never had a neighbor until I moved here; I mean I never went next door to anybody’s house. A lot of people don’t even know their neighbors.”
Morgan said if one neighbor looks out the window and happens to see another outside, “we’ll walk out and start talking to them.”
“I’ve lived in neighborhoods before and I loved my neighbors, but I never spent time with them,” she said.
The residents of The Birches are encouraging other neighborhoods to pick a holiday theme and decorate for the Christmas season.
“They could start with a wreath, and I just think that would be pretty to be able to ride around and look at that,” said Morgan.
For the residents of The Birches, decorating for Christmas is not only a way to make their neighborhood feel special, but also a way to bond.
“It’s just another way to bind you together,” said Morgan.
Camaraderie, coming together and caring for each other are what the Christmas season is all about, Morgan said.
“I can honestly say what’s made us close is we do things together,” she said.
Brock added, “It brings neighbors together. ... And it makes you proud when you look at it.”
• Contact Ruthie Robison at 581-7235 or rrobison@gwcommonwealth.com.
