There is one thing that I do like to see every year and that is the magazine covers especially the House and Garden type Magazines. It's always nice to look at the perfect spreads they have set up and drool over some very funky decorations!
As a child the first thing that springs to mind is visiting Santa. To get to the Arthur Barnetts Santa you walked down a long hallway and there were window type displays of various fairy tales and nursery rhymes.
And at the DIC Santa (the best one) you had to go down stairs to his 'cave' like spot and after you walked past a display of clockwork type pixies doing all sorts of fun and interesting things. Unfortunately DIC eventually closed down (It's an Art Gallery now) and the pixies ended up in the Early Settlers Museum. We were incredibly lucky as they had them out on display when we went down there on holiday a few years back. I'm sure if DIC were still around there would have been some PC wally's complaining about the School Master giving one of the boys the strap and the Miller beating his donkey. I LOVED them!
One sight I didn't see as a child was the now infamous in our family "Crown Street Lights Display". Someone (maybe even me) had heard that a bunch of houses in Crown street had done a full on job of decorating up their frontages with lights so one evening after dusk we went out in the car to check it out. They hadn't not one light on one house anywhere. It became a family joke.
Each day that I went to Primary School in Dunedin I travelled up Albany Street Past the Otago Museum and along Great King Street passing by a little Church. I have no idea how I discovered it but I can tell you that for the month of December there was a nativity scene in the lobby of the church. Everyday either on the way to or from school I would stop by the Nativity and take a moment.
When I think of it now I would say that the Christmas decorations on George St, the main street in Dunedin were lame. But back then I thought they were awesome. I loved the way that one day there were none and the next you could see them all the way from one end of the street right to the Octagon at the centre of town. I loved that they meant that Capping was about to happen, Santa would be here soon and following on from that there was the Summer A & P Show, the Festival procession down the main street and Orientation about 3 months worth of fun and excitement in true Dunedin fashion.
The last thing that wasn't ever intentional but that I absolutely loved was the one Christmas that I spent at Carey's Bay. Our house was on top of the hill and it was around the corner from Port Chalmers and the city lights and had a view directly down the harbour to Tairoa heads there were practically no street lights.. If you have ever seen Dunedin Harbour you'd know that there is a channel marked for the boats all the way down on the North side the lights are green and on the south they are red... it is a perfect Christmas necklace on the water a string of Christmas lights snaking out to the ocean. Peaceful and twinkling.
♥
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