LANCASTER COUNTY, Pa. - It wasn’t beginning to look a lot like Christmas in Jim and Marybeth Cramer’s front yard in Manheim Township until after the Thanksgiving mood ended this past weekend. “We sort of switched over” on Friday night, Mrs. Cramer said Saturday. “That’s when we said, ‘OK, Thanksgiving’s over …
now we can start with the Christmas stuff.” The Cramers, who are gearing up for their first Christmas in their single-family home on Surrey Drive, weren’t alone in using Turkey Day weekend to get a Christmas display going. While you could see your share of displays leading up to Thanksgiving, things really started heating up over the weekend.
To drive around the Lancaster area during the day, it was easy to spot people out at work, stringing lights or putting up wreaths on front doors or in windows. Then, at night, it was even easier to see the finished product lots of lights, manger displays, Santas and their helpers, and maybe a lit reindeer or two. It was the combination of Thanksgiving ending and, for many people, having a few days off from work that made it a natural time to make their houses more Christmasy, several said.
“It really builds up the feeling of the season,” Marybeth Cramer said. Mrs. Cramer, 42, and her 43-year-old husband have three daughters Rebecca, 12, Maggie, 8, and Sarah, 5 “who really have fun with it,” she said. “We had to go out and buy extra things, since we were in a townhouse” nearby, with a smaller front yard, she said. The family moved to 481 Surrey Drive in May.