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Photo by Sarah Finnegan.
Jaime Thursby of On a Shoestring Antiques prepares Christmas decorations ahead of the holiday season.
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Staff photo.
Children sing and dance during the 2015 Christmas tree lighting ceremony. This year’s event is scheduled for Dec. 1 at the Hoover Municipal Center.
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Staff photo.
Children sing and dance during the 2015 Christmas tree lighting ceremony. This year’s event is scheduled for Dec. 1 at the Hoover Municipal Center.
From chasing Santas to admiring twinkling light displays, Hoover takes on a special glow at Christmastime. It may be one of Alabama’s biggest metropolitan areas, but residents, businesses and city workers take the time to smell the cocoa during the holidays.
All aglow in Bluff Park
For the past seven years, Lights on the Bluff has offered participants a free fun-and-festive evening that includes music, food and hayride tours of the neighborhood home decorations on the second Saturday of the month. Hosted by Bluff Park Baptist Church, this year’s LOTB is Dec. 10, from 5 to 7:30 p.m. at 2211 McGwier Drive.
The evening includes Christmas carols around the church Nativity scene, children’s “make and take” holiday ornament table, snacking on boiled peanuts, toasting marshmallows around an open fire and sipping hot chocolate, coffee and wassail.
At 5:30 p.m., hayrides throughout the surrounding neighborhoods begin along predetermined routes to offer the best holiday light displays.
Bluff Park Baptist Church Pastor Tony Barber has helped organized Lights on the Bluff since its inception. “We love being a part of this special evening and presenting it as a service to our community,” Barber said. “A hayride is such a traditional, quaint and fun event, and enjoying the festive lights can really enhance the Christmas spirit.”
Bluff Park also is holding a Christmas parade on Saturday, Dec. 3, from 10:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. It will begin at the park next to Shades Cliff pool, go along Cloudland Drive, Lester Lane and Clearview Road, then cut through the Bluff Park Village Shopping Center before ending at Sweetspire Gardens with food trucks, music and activities for kids. People can register to be in the parade on the 2016 Bluff Park Christmas Parade Facebook page.
Bluff Park resident Teresa Real is no stranger to the Christmas spirit — or the spirit of Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day or Halloween, for that matter.
“I’m a decorator. I decorate for every holiday though not as big as at Christmas,” Real said. “And each year it gets bigger and bigger. If it didn’t, my neighbors would be disappointed.”
At home at 3882 Carisbrooke Drive in Bluff Park, Real has decorated her house inside and out for all of the 23 years she’s resided there. Beginning in November, passersby can see about a half dozen blow-ups, strings of lights throughout the shrubbery and an array of colored lights projected on the house, she said.
“I get new things every year and change them periodically,” Real said. “We’ve had a variety of blow-ups including a gingerbread house with Santa peeking out, a snowman, Santa in an airplane and a lighthouse with a snowman. We even had a palm tree with a Santa but he had to retire.”
Real said she comes from a festive family, and her family, including her four grandchildren and her great-nieces and nephews, thoroughly enjoys all the bright lights and fun figures.
“And we always have people driving and walking by telling us how much they love it and how welcoming it makes the neighborhood,” she said.
A familiar Bluff Park neighborhood fixture — the big, red caboose that houses part of On a Shoestring Antiques — will also sport a festive façade this holiday season.
Rodney and Lee Thursby have owned On a Shoestring Antiques at 601 Shades Crest Road since 1982. They sell collectibles, classic vintage, and crafting and refurbishing items such as doors and windows, said their son, Jaime Thursby.
Jaime Thursby is an apparel and sunglass wholesaler who recently moved back to Hoover. He joins his brother, Jay Thursby, his sisters, Amber Croy and Tara Graf, and Tara’s husband, Darrell Graf, to assist their parents in the family’s operation of the antique shop. Those duties include decorating the caboose for the holidays for the first time in nearly 20 years.
“We used to do it years ago, but then all of us kids went away,” Jaime Thursby said. “But now we’re all back in one place and can’t wait to get started.”
According to Jaime Thursby, the caboose will be outlined with red lights and feature garlands, bows and vintage lights.
“We just love Christmas, and this will have a classic Christmas look,” he said. “We’re a small mom-and-pop store, and while we hope people will come and shop during the day, we want them to check us out at night. It’s great fun for us but also a fun tradition for the community.”
Jen Mishalanie’s holiday decorating is two-fold — at her home at 2317 Woodcreek Drive and her shop, Past and Presents, at 2145 Tyler Road.
“I’ve been doing our house for 15 years, and while both our children are in college, I’d never stop because they’d miss it so much,” Mishalanie said. “We have a candy-cane lane, a blow-up Santa, trees, wreaths and make the two front windows into packages. And everything has lights, including the roofline.”
Mishalanie also goes all out for the holidays at Past and Presents, what she calls an “antique boutique gift shop” she’s owned for four years.
Built as a home in 1929, patrons to the cottage-style, six-room structure are greeted with a candy-cane forest, a front porch of dangling icicle lights, and wreaths and bows inside and out.
“And we’ve got lots of trees of all sized and all colored lights,” she said. “And if you see it and ‘just have to have it,’ the trees are available for purchase.”
Touring the Town with Santa
While Bluff Park homes are lighting up, the Hoover Fire Department will take on their annual Christmas Eve Santa Run, during which each of the city’s 10 fire stations transport Santa Claus through their respective neighborhoods via the main thoroughfares. The trick is, no one knows who the real St. Nick is.
According to Rusty Lowe, the Fire Department’s public information and executive officer, this will be the 26th year for Hoover’s Santa Run.
“It started in 1990 when Lt. Jim Phillips (now retired) dressed as Santa and stood on the roof of Station 4 on Municipal Drive, waving at drivers on I-459,” Lowe said. “In the following years, the run started as Santa riding the ladder truck around the city and has grown to all of our engines and ladder trucks participating on Christmas Eve.”
