AROUND LEXINGTON COUNTY

After much preparation and anticipation, the most celebrated day of the year has arrived.

Home and surroundings have been decorated for weeks with festive decor.

Sheri Kimball and

Sure Wharton report other must-see homes before the holidays are over.

Ginger Sander’s residence at 114 Midway Rd. off Andrew Corley Road, features Mickey Mouse inflatables. You will enjoy these Disney characters.

The yard of Wyman Keisler and Steve Keisler, 224 Hope Ferry Rd., offers lights galore for you amazement.

Have you ridden down Main Street in Lexington? Trees are entwined with twinkling lights and store fronts depict the season. Don’t miss the enormous decorated tree in Town Square that is all dressed for the holidays.

How fortunate we are to live in a community with the very best people who live by faith, family and tradition and celebrate the reason for this joyous season.

Lexington’s own Minh Le will be featured in the January/February issue of Harper’s Bazaar magazine. She will also have a fashion show to benefit the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation in Charlotte on Feb. 1. Her designs are sold in New York and Charleston and at her studio in Lexington, 403 E. Main St.

Lexington County Recreation and Aging Commission’s new facility on Barr Road is now open. It features two regulation basketball courts that can convert to four volley ball courts. The complex will host indoor pickle ball league, adult walking programs, adult fitness classes and preschool inflatable play times. Outside there are soccer, lacrosse and flag football fields.

Thanks to Anne Bull for the two previous reports.

Representatives of Boeing were in Lexington County last week to meet with business and education leaders as part of “Lexington County Boeing Day.” The visitors met with county educators about employment opportunities for county high school graduates and had lunch with local business leaders. Thanks to Scott Adams for this report.

Seasonal thoughts: Pearl Buck

speaks of “loving and being loved in return, not for gifts tied with bows, but for gifts of the spirit!

“The miraculous blooming of a white rose in mid-winder dramatizes the power of faith” in Selma Lagerlof’s “Legend of the Christmas Rose.”

The merry family gatherings-The old, the very young,

The strangely lovely way they

Harmonize in carols sung.

For Christmas is tradition time-Traditions that recall

The precious memories down the years,

The sameness of them all.

Helen Lowrie Marshall

Also memorable is “The Night Before Christmas” by Clement Clarke Moore. Everyone, young or old, delights in reading this each year.

Also, I enjoy The Polar Express and A Christmas Carol.

Don’t forget Virginia’s question to the editor of the New York Sun: “Is there a Santa Claus?” And the editor replied, “Thank God he lives and lives forever, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.”

To quote Tiny Tim from A Christmas Carol, “God Bless us every one.”

Happy birthday to Becky Addy, Sen. Katrina Shealy, Virginia Gates, Virginia Bingenheimer, Macauley Morrison, Ann Purcell, Tammy Shofstall, Donna Peeler, Kristen Antley, Jim Brittingham, Noah Brock, James Compton, Ernie Coskrey, Jeanette Ford, Carl Shealy, Sarah Sherman, Parker Smith, Myrtle Billings, Abigail Coskrey, Christopher Coskrey, Rosemary Coskrey, Cynthia Douglas, Vickie Ettenger, David Loney, James Wack, Kelley Evans, Miles Gessner, Vickie Quattlebaum, Heather Troglauer, Zane Redd, Monica Schmitz, Nicholas Schneider, Lori Holmgreen, Jonathan Sawyer, and Alana Schaeffer.