Some people go all out with Christmas decorations — but Kristine Lilly of Kyle, Texas, gives even the brightest light displays the sweetest competition.
Lilly's super-charged approach to decorating began in 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic was raging and friends and families were separated over the holidays. Lilly herself was preparing to spend Christmas without her two children, both stationed on military bases, and without her granddaughter.
“I had just handed out Halloween candy with tongs and a mask and was wondering what Christmas was going to look like,” Lilly tells TODAY.com.
She says she thought back to the Christmases of her own childhood in Arkansas when her mother, Sandy Crace, would make gingerbread houses for her children to take to school.
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“We would just stare at the house and wait for the day we could eat it,” Lilly recalls. She adds that her mom knew how to make “the best gingerbread ever” and had a knack for making the holiday season feel “magical.”
She says she realized she wanted to share that same feeling with her community. So, she decided to turn her home into a giant gingerbread house — and a new annual tradition was born.
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Everything in her epic gingerbread house display is handmade, Lilly says. And what started as a way to spread Christmas cheer at a dark time has grown into a popular holiday attraction that draws hundreds of visitors. Each visitor is treated to a free cup of hot chocolate and photos with Santa, played by Lilly’s husband, Robert Helms.
“He was dubious at first,” Lilly says regarding her idea of transforming their home and dressing him up in a Santa suit. But, she says, he soon “embraced it” and began eagerly greeting guests and handing out candy.
Now the holiday display is serving an even larger purpose: Lilly is asking visitors for canned food donations to help combat food insecurity in the local community. Some visitors also donate money. All donations go to the Hays County Food Bank in San Marcos, Texas, she says.
Lilly also sells gingerbread cookies on the porch made from the recipe of the woman she credits with giving her a childhood filled with Christmas magic: her mom.
And while the undertaking of transforming her home each year is a tremendous one, it helps that with a little imagination, her undecorated home looks sort of like, well, a gingerbread house.
It's almost like this was meant to be, Lilly says: “It makes me wonder if this was somewhere in my subconscious when I chose the paint color.”
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