A Strong Grip On Season’s Magic
Hey, you people who wanted Barbara White to take a year off from decorating so you could have a shot at winning Wallace’s Christmas decoration contest: You had your chance.
Barbara is back.
Her two-story home glitters again on its timbered hillside overlooking Gem’s Canyon Creek. Christmas lights flicker a Morse code of good will to passers-by.
Her handmade cutouts of Mary and Joseph, Santa Claus and angels smile serenely through wind, rain, sun and snow. The scene isn’t as elaborate as in past years, but it is truly a tribute to Barbara’s Christmas spirit.
At 51, she’s so crippled with degenerative arthritis she sometimes needs crutches to walk.
“I may not win this year, but that doesn’t matter,” Barbara says, the angels on her sweatshirt glowing red and green in the twinkling indoor lights. “I don’t have to win, I just want to do the best I can.”
Hunting for Santa’s tracks in the snow and chasing after his elusive sleigh bells made Christmas magic for Barbara as a child.
As an adult, she found magic in lights and nativity scenes. After her marriage fell apart in 1977, Barbara suffered through two dark Christmases before admitting how much she missed the magic.
“I said, ‘OK, I’m not going to do this anymore. I love Christmas,”’ she says. “I will brighten spirits for myself and my kids.” At after-Christmas sales, she bought garlands and hundreds of lights. A few years later, she projected coloring book characters on plywood, cut them out with a jigsaw and painted them.
Every year, her cutout population grew until it included Strawberry Shortcake and Smurfs, Humpty Dumpty and elves. As soon as one Christmas ended, Barbara began planning for the next. Each had to be bigger and better. Contest awards poured in.
Until 1993. She’d known for 20 years about her arthritis. But that year, her knees and right shoulder disintegrated. She cracked emotionally and physically - a former snowmobile racer hardly able to climb from her bed.
Her house stayed dark that Christmas. Last year, she mustered enough energy to erect a nativity scene on her front porch. Last summer, she vowed not to put herself through the pain this year.
But, “I started feeling so bad, I said, ‘OK, I’m going to do it. I have to,”’ Barbara says.
She began toting out her cutouts in October. Then she added lights so people could see them at night. To save herself steps, she wired all the lights to sockets on her main floor.
Every time she saw a cutout in the shed, she dragged it out until, last week, her hillside glowed as in Christmases past.
She hasn’t seen her work at night yet and doesn’t know if she wants to.
“I don’t know if I’ll be satisfied,” she says, pulling open her lace curtains to see the unpainted cutout backs on her porch. “But it had the right effect on me. Oh yeah, this was just what I needed.”
I’m dreaming of a white Wallace
Snow or not, Wallace is the perfect place for a candlelight walk through neighborhoods of Victorian homes sparkling with Christmas lights.
The walk is just part of the town’s big jump into Christmas on Saturday. There’s lunch with Santa at 11 a.m. and downtown contests galore: best trees, best gingerbread, Little Miss Snowflake.
Shops will sell ornaments fashioned after the historic Shoshone County Courthouse and burn barrels will warm hands throughout town. The Winter Walk will start at 5 p.m. Wear your muffs and fur collars and start the season right.
Top 10
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, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo