Everywhere you look, festively decorated homes are lighting up neighbourhoods with their glow. These are the people who put lots of effort into creating winter wonderlands
Liam Tilly’s house on Dublin 4’s Bath Avenue, with its cornucopia of electric lights and Christmas motifs, has become a festive landmark.
Tilly’s decorating habit began 14 years ago, after his wife died. There are illuminations, a sign that says “Santa Stop Here” and a rather lifelike Santa in a sleigh being pulled by reindeer outside the front door. There’s also a big barrel to collect rainwater that children are encouraged to throw coins into.
While the lighting display certainly delights his 13 grandchildren, he decorates mainly to raise money for charity, last year raising €7,500 for Our Lady’s Hospice in Harold’s Cross.
His six-weeks of illuminations clocked up a €550 electricity bill last year. This year the hospice will pay the bill.
During the rest of the year Tilly gathers cuddly toys from the €2 shop that he distributes to kids in the area on the day he switches on the illuminations. “The joy the kids get from it gives you the strength to keep going,” he says.
Lifelong passion
Dermot and Marie Cooke have been decorating their villa-style redbrick for almost 50 years. Reindeer flank the front door, cherry red lights frame the fanlight and a 10 foot tall tree has pride of place in their front window. Set on a raised platform, its decorations span half a century.
The tree is artificial and is draped in tiers of multi-coloured lights. From the bottom a set of Santa faces smile at passers-by. Strings of tilly lamps, leaves, cherries, old-fashioned, domed fairy lights and icicles ascend in ever-decreasing circles towards the Santa at the top.
It takes Dermot about six hours to get the house ready. Marie, his wife, is the bauble mistress. It takes her and their middle son, Drew, two hours to dress the tree.
Christmas offers respite from the doom and gloom, says Dermot. He is surprised by the number of compliments their efforts garner. “We get a lot of pleasure from kids and parents who stop to look at the lights.”
Georgian grandeur
Couturier Jen Kelly prefers a more traditional approach. He is not an illuminations fan. “Lights don’t really work on this house, a Georgian pile on North Great George’s Street,” he says.
He recalls his childhood in Derry when he decorated the tree with papier-mâché chains, unravelling them carefully and repairing any breaks with Sellotape. Now he prefers to use flowers instead of Christmas trees. “A tree isn’t me,” he explains. “I prefer to use a lot of amaryllis and hyacinth that offer colour and fragrance.”
From the slate grey front door hangs an oversized floral wreath. It has a faux fir base and is decorated with faux hydrangea and roses and grosgrain ribbon. Preferring not to tempt fate, he takes in the wreath at night.
The double-fronted windows are festooned with window boxes filled with festive green topiary, plants and red roses. Kelly is planning to add some wooden toy soldiers that he’s spotted in Dunnes Stores.
Get the look
Mary Mac Sherry is chief executive of thechristmasdecorators.ie, whose UK clients include several Premier League footballers and who in the past has festooned the interior of Beckingham Palace.
She spends most of her year researching creative ways to do the 12 Days.
Her services cost from €300 to “the sky is the limit”. One of this year’s clients is coming home from Australia to surprise his parents not only with his presence but by lighting up the family home to announce his return.
The plan is that when the parents “go out shopping” MacSherry and her team will descend on the home and decorate both inside and out.
“Battery-operated lights, the kind suitable for use outdoors, positioned in topiary trees or shrubs on either side of the front door are a quick way to Christmas-ise your exterior,” MacSherry says. “You don’t even need outdoor power.”
You can add colour by winding red ribbon around the trunks of any shrubs.
MacSherry also recommends wrapping tree trunks and branches in lights.
This year the trend is for so-called pencil trees – long, paint-brush-tip-shaped shrubs which are available in real and artificial varieties.
One smart style that will make your outdoors stand out is a faux fir made of Christmas roses.
Does all that sound too much like hard work? Then a giant red bow on the door knocker is the reluctant decorator’s solution, she says.
This year, MacSherry and her UK colleagues decorated a 55ft tree outside the Church of the Nativity on Manger Square in Bethlehem, illuminating it with red, white and green lights and topped with a red star.
