Keokuk, IA

The North Pole isn’t the only place where elves work year-round to prepare for the holidays. In the southeast Iowa town of Keokuk (pop. 11,427), Santa’s helpers come in the form of volunteers who stage the City of Christmas, a spectacular light extravaganza featuring more than 100 handcrafted displays in the town’s Rand Park.

Begun in 1989 with just a few displays, Keokuk’s City of Christmas has grown to become a beloved holiday tradition. Financed by donations and run by volunteers, the event is truly a celebration of holiday—and hometown—spirit.

“We do this because we love it,” says Jim Shuman, president of the City of Christmas and the primary designer and builder of its displays. “It’s our holiday gift to the people of the area.”

The people who ooh and aah from inside the 12,000 vehicles that pass through the park each year may not realize the large amount of work that makes the City of Christmas possible. Most of the displays are constructed in the basement of Keokuk’s senior center, with a half-dozen volunteers working steadily throughout the year. Several new designs are added each Christmas, while existing ones are improved.

A single visit is hardly enough to absorb the beauty of the displays. Among the perennial favorites are a brilliant poinsettia with 1,600 lights and 64 different patterns of movement, a “Candy Cane Lane” and gingerbread house, and several displays featuring holiday celebrations from around the world. Two favorite new displays include a “Leaping Deer” that jumps in a graceful arc over vehicles as they pass below, and “Old Man Winter,” who blows the cold north wind ahead of him in a design studded with more than 1,500 lights.

“We get ideas from catalogs and by visiting stores and other displays, but we always try to make ours bigger and better,” Shuman says.

While many of the designs feature familiar holiday themes, a growing number reflects the town’s unique identity. One of the newest displays, for example, features a hand reaching down toward six lighted globes. The design plays tribute to three Keokuk children who were killed in a house fire in 1999 and to the three firefighters who died trying to save them.

Another display celebrates the memory of Stephy Jo Dean, who died of cancer in 1990 at the age of 20. “Before she died, we took her through the City of Christmas, and she was entranced by the lights,” recalls Stephy’s mother, Sherry Kay. “Near the end of her life, we were talking about how she wanted to be remembered, and she said she wanted to have a display in the City of Christmas. My husband and I used her memorial money to build an angel. I go there every night to see it, and my holidays are a lot brighter knowing her memory lives on in that beautiful angel.”

While volunteers work throughout the year on the City of Christmas, the week before Thanksgiving brings a rush of activity. Each year between 20 and 30 people pitch in to help erect the displays and string more than 250,000 lights. The entire process usually takes about three days.

“You have to be half-crazy to do this,” says volunteer Richard Malloy with a grin. “We set up the displays before Thanksgiving, taking vacation days so we can freeze outside in the park. Then we baby-sit it all the way through the Christmas season, and take it down when the temperature is usually 20 below zero. But when we see it all lit up—well, it’s like being a kid again. It makes it all worthwhile.”

Lori Erickson is a freelance writer in Iowa City, Iowa.

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