Christmas at the Castle starts in the days before Thanksgiving in 5,000 square feet of warehouse space.
Doors swing open and gloved hands reach forward to bring out crates full of decorations. Boxes of ornaments are opened. Strings of lights — in the hundreds — are plugged in and holiday displays are checked. Wreaths and garlands are sorted — and then they unwrap the trees.
“I’ve usually got about five guys in the shop and we fluff out all the trees,” Rod Hunter, owner of Christmas Decor says with a laugh. “My guys don’t like that word, but we still call it fluffing.”
Just like the holiday season, it’s an annual process to bring the splendor of Christmas to Sanford Health’s Castle of Care. Since 2007, Hunter’s Lawn & Landscape, an affiliate of the holiday decorating company Christmas Decor, has decorated the outside and interior of the Sanford Children’s Hospital, as well as other buildings across the main Sanford Health campus in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, from the surgical tower to the Imagenetics building and Ava’s House.
An especially important part of the company’s outside decorating is the giant tree. It’s brought by truck to the Sanford Children’s Hospital for the lighting ceremony to officially kick off the holiday season. Most importantly, the tree needs a boom lift to reach the highest branches with lights and decorations that will sparkle and shine.
Some assembly required
The process of decorating the Sanford Children’s Hospital includes storing decorations for the 11 months they’re not in use. Behind-the-scenes details might not be as magical as the end result, but there’s a lot of heart that goes into the project at every stage.
“We bring in a variety of different decorations and try to put a smile on everybody’s face over the holidays,” Hunter says.
Watch video: A Very Merry Christmas at Sanford Children’s Hospital
The evening of Thanksgiving, when most families are lounging at home or in the hustle of holiday shopping, Hunter and crew are loading decorations onto trailers. Then the day after Thanksgiving, they start delivering and spend the weekend — quite literally — decking the halls.
“I don’t know how many boxes we bring in — lots of boxes full of everything from polar bears to elves to Santa Clauses and a mailbox to the North Pole,” Hunter says. “We’ve probably got a couple hundred feet of garland that’s strung around the lobby and the railings. And we’ve got bows and wreaths and then sock monkeys for the kids. There’s a lot that we bring in.”
According to Hunter, the goal is not perfection, but to make each tree look as though kids went and chose their favorite ornaments for it. The team tries to choose colorful, whimsical and fun decorations to capture imaginations. The crew members sometime even wear Santa hats while they decorate.
“We go for big, bulky, fun ornaments,” Hunter says. “We’ve had elves split in half and we’ve had their behind and legs hanging out of the tree. We try to do something a little different and creative every year.”
By the end of that last weekend in November, despite long hours and sometimes icy conditions, the majority of the Christmas decorations are displayed and the hospital feels festive.
Spreading joy as a family
One year, Hunter unintentionally started a special tradition for decorating the trees in the Castle lobby.
“It started as kind of a fluke. I got behind so I called my wife and asked her to help me decorate the trees,” Hunter explains. “And she brought our twin boys in with her, so they started decorating. And I thought it was such a neat sight to see them helping, as children themselves, put decorations on the trees.”
Ever since then, Hunter’s wife and their twin sons, Leighton and Blake, come in and help decorate the lobby trees. They do everything from hanging ornaments to putting out the display gift boxes.
“Thank gosh we’ve got enough trees that they don’t have to fight over the stars, because they like putting the tree toppers on,” Hunter says. “They look forward to it.”
It’s a special area of the Children’s Hospital, now reserved each year for a meaningful family tradition.
Sent from the heart
Among all the memories, Hunter says one that sticks out is the time his youngest son wrote a letter to Santa Claus. His plan was to encourage other kids to use the mailbox for the North Pole.
After writing the note and addressing it to Santa, his son slid it carefully through the mail slot.
“By the time we were leaving, somebody had already come and put another letter in the mailbox,” Hunter recalls. “So we took the letter, and we actually got the child what they had asked for from Santa Claus. My wife purchased a couple of the items. We brought them back anonymously to be delivered from Santa Claus, in reply to the letter in the mailbox.”
Fulfilling wishes from the mailbox has become another family tradition for the Hunters. They’ve even noticed that others have also started answering some of the letters too.
The magic of Christmas
All of Christmas Decor’s decorating around Sioux Falls is done to make people happy. But to Hunter there’s something special about the Sanford Children’s Castle of Care Hospital.
“When you’re decorating and you’re seeing families walk through the lobby, seeing the kids being wheeled through and their eyes light up, and that’s the whole point,” Hunter says. “That’s my favorite part. It’s not the lights or the decorations. I love the smiles on their faces or watching them stick their heads in the Santa Claus cutout, or walking up to touch the polar bear. It’s the families watching us when the lobby goes from being nothing to, within a few hours, a winter wonderland.”
It can be emotional for families to be in the hospital during the holidays. Hunter hopes that the decorations at the Castle can put a smile on their faces, even if just for awhile.
“It gets me every year. Some years it’s tougher than others, you know. You just have to keep it in perspective that, you’re doing it for them,” he says.
Hunter and his crew attend the annual Christmas lighting ceremony. This is where the final element is on display and they watch families soak in the magic.
“A lot of people don’t know what we do, and that’s totally fine. But to stand back and hear the kids ‘oooh’ while running over to the tree. Or to listen to several hundred people counting down at the big tree lighting ceremony, it can be emotional,” Hunter says. “When we’re standing out there we’re seeing families that are all here for a reason.”
And no matter the reason, Hunter is thankful to be part of helping the littlest patients and their families see the magic of Christmas — even through a hospital window.
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Posted In Children's, Community, Health Information, Specialty Care
