The hat tree is new this year. So is the mouse tree, the Florida sunshine tree and the fairy tree (not to be confused with the gnome-and-fairy tree). The chocolate tree is back, as is the mummy tree. The Hawaiian tree with the smoking volcano didn't make it this year, but it just wouldn't be Christmas without the snow tree, which has been spitting out fake flakes for at least 30 years, now would it?
"This is what I do," said Paula Lee of Acworth, welcoming us into the twinkling interior forest she assembles each year. "It's a lot of work, but I enjoy it. It's my gift to others."
She began decorating in September. Thirty-five trees later, she is done. Sort of.
"I never leave them alone," she said. "I tore up one three or four times. I couldn't get it to suit me."
A Boswell, Okla., native who grew up in Augusta, Lee has lived in the Bentwater subdivision for six years, having moved up from Peachtree City. Before that, she and her now-deceased husband, Bob, lived in Columbus for more than three decades, raising their sons and running a dry cleaners and an automotive store there. In December 1957, their first Christmas as a married couple, she put up just one tree. It was pink. Bob didn't love it, but she was undeterred.
Over time, the Christmas decor started spreading throughout the house and now includes not just the trees but all manner of holiday gear: a bathtub full of plastic bubbles and a family of ducks; a singing polar bear backed up by two penguins; an electronic mouse who plays the piano; a squad of pandas; a mini barbershop quartet; a life-size Santa; a light-up peacock; a motorized Bing Crosby who croons "White Christmas."
"He used to move around," Lee said. "He's getting old."
Lee, who will be 75 next month, says she moves around a little less these days, too.
"I don't work as fast as I used to," she said. And she's careful not to invite any decorating injuries. During our visit she sent our colleague, a strapping 6-foot-2-inch photographer, up a ladder to hoist a bow atop a 10-foot tree, explaining, "I don't need to risk breaking a hip." She urged caution as she pressed her surrogate into service.
"Think positive," she said. "I don't have time to go to the emergency room."
Mission accomplished, Lee let us in on a few secrets. Her power bill doesn't go up much because she only plugs in everything when company's coming. She's scored a fair number of holiday decorations for free, just by asking harried store managers in the frenzied days after Christmas if she could have, say, the giant inflatable soup can that adorned the Campbell's tree she put up one year.
She prefers decorating herself but accepts help. The outdoorsy tree was a family affair.
"My son Mark shot most of these pheasants," Lee said. A friend's emu farm supplied other odds and ends, she said, explaining, "everything on the bird is edible or usable, even the toenails. You can make necklaces out of them."
Todd Lee, another son, recalls that his mom's tree collection started small, with a few tabletop varieties.
"She typically will plan a good year out," he said. "It's a constant work in progress."
In fact, this isn't his mom's biggest year; she's had more than 40 in years past.
"What a thrill to get her as a neighbor," said Natalie Culpepper, who lives across the street and plans to take visiting relatives to see Lee's display. "It's like having your sweet grandma across the street. I think she just lives for this. She spends all year long figuring out what themes she's going to go with."
But the trees don't stay up year-round. Come January, Lee will begin defoliating her three-bedroom, two-bathroom house.
"I just take it down when I get ready," she said. "I'm not in a rush. I'm not depressed about it. When you get your house cleaned up, it looks bigger."
She'll take mental notes all year, planning for Christmas 2012. (The King Tut head she once spotted at a Rooms to Go inspired the mummy tree, for example.) And she's already got an idea for taking things up a notch next year.
"I'd like to find some wide, plastic ribbon and wrap the house like a present," Lee said. "Wouldn't that be neat?"
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