As the air sharpens and adopts a bitter chill, fall turns into winter and the Christmas decorations make their way out of the stuffed garages and storage units. Visitors from all over town are seen walking through the glistening archway of lights with their loved ones to catch a glimpse of the decorations.
A decorated arch way going down the sidewalk.
A house with green reflecting onto it as lights are hanging from the tree.
An overview of the cartoon-decorated themed house.
An inflatable with the words Welcome to Who-Ville, written on it.
Decorated bench where visitors go to take photos.
A close-up of a small gingerbread house, present and snowman on a lawn.
A handcrafted gingerbread house display.
Display of reindeer and Santa Klause in his sleigh on a lawn.
When it comes to Christmas, the popularity of Warnock Court is still in full swing, influencing some homes to take advantage by partnering with Williamson County Brown Santa, a nonprofit organization that specializes in assisting financially troubled families with food and gifts for the holidays.
“I am glad that Warnock has become so big, that people are partnering with charities so everyone can have a happy holiday season,” sophomore Soumya Kulkarni said. “I have never seen a community put so much effort into seasonal celebrations like this.”
Sophomore Olivia Brown has lived in Parkside at Mayfield Ranch for over a decade and has made visiting the street a tradition for nearly seven years.
“It makes me feel very jolly walking through the street,” Brown said. “The Christmas decorations are very big and bright and very pretty to look at. It’s very cool that most of the street agrees to do this.”
While the street is also known for its impressive Halloween display, the Christmas decorating has gone on for just as long.
“Now, we’re crazy about [the holidays],” senior Pierce Martin said. “Most of the time we don’t do anything too out of the blue. It is one of those spillover things where if we did something for Halloween we might as well do something for Christmas.”
Family and consumer sciences teacher, Jodi Garner moved into Warnock Court six years ago unaware of the tradition of decorating extravagantly for Halloween and Christmas.
“I was completely unprepared when we first moved in,” Garner said. “We don’t decorate for Halloween and the first year we didn’t do any decorations, we learned very quickly that there are certain expectations from the community for our street.”
During the holiday season, the festive street can bring joy to neighbors, and large groups of onlookers who travel to the neighborhood with the sole purpose of viewing the street’s decorations.
“It would be awesome if everybody was sweet and respectful,” Garner said. “But living on a street with a lot of people who come through, decorations get broken, you hear random stories about people walking up on your lawn. For Halloween, we had a person randomly walk into one of our neighbor’s houses because they weren’t answering the door for trick-or-treaters.”
Last Halloween, there were nearly 4000 visitors from 6 p.m. to about 10 p.m. While the visitors are more dispersed during the holiday season, the sheer amount of people can still cause an overwhelming situation for residents.
“Our neighbors really tried to warn us, but there is no warning for what you experience,” Garner said. “You have to live through it first to be able to [understand].’ I do enjoy Christmas a lot more than Halloween because it’s spread out over December, whereas Halloween is just one night.”
As the years go by, the feasibility of maintaining the tradition comes into question by residents on the street.
“It’s a lot of time, energy and money for sure,” Garner said. “My neighbors love it, [and] I dig my minimalistic version of the decorations, but [I wonder about] the sustainability of it. How long can we go? Every year we have more people who come to the street. How long can we sustain the amount of people in the traffic that comes through before it becomes a negative?”