By JOHN LEE
Keith May’s Christmas Village features an animated Ferris wheel, a merry-go-round, Santa and his reindeer and this year a Neshoba County Fair scene.
There are many other small little details in the window display such as men fishing, snowball fights, and a Nativity scene on display downtown through Christmas.
“Along with the Fair scene, I also have a city scene and a rural mountain area scene,” said May. “We’ve got a train that runs through the mountain area and a trolly that goes through the city area. There’s over 200 buildings total this year.”
The multi-window display returned Nov. 24 next to the Justice Court building across from the Courthouse. The ceramic village was on display in 2017 and 2018 at another location downtown.
May previously lived in Port Gibson and that’s where he started his hobby of building Christmas villages. He found his inspiration from wanting to have more decorations at home and felt building the villages would be a great addition.
“My wife was on the Main Street Board, and there were several empty buildings in the area, which is where we started putting the Christmas villages to catch peoples’ attention,” May said. “We then moved to Lake Village, where we continued with building the villages.”
May, who currently works as a safety manager at Weyerhaeuser, has been in Philadelphia for six years, and was able to continue his Christmas Village building every year since except last year due to there not being any vacant buildings to set up the village. This year, the village has a home for all to see.
“I’ve taken some vacation time from work to set up this village, and this year I was able to get into the building earlier so I had more time to set up,” he said. “I worked with Tim Moore and the Chamber of Commerce. Attorney Max Kilpatrick has donated the use of the windows.
It takes a lot of work building the village, since every house, building, person, tree, vehicle, or other decoration has its own box. May said it’s a challenge since each year is slightly different with the layout and buildings, but seeing it come together is always worth it.
“With COVID going around, we need something to take our minds off things,” he said.
May said that some of the comments left in the past have called the village “beautiful, gorgeous, and an amazing addition to the Christmas cheer.”
Tim Moore, director of the Philadelphia-Neshoba County Chamber of Commerce, has worked directly with May to get this village going.
“It creates excitement and imagination for our children,” Moore said. “You can image ice skating, going on the merry-go-round, riding the Ferris wheel, or walking on the campgrounds. You can pretend you’re in the scenes.”
Moore said that May is an active collector of villages and loves to give back to the community. Although it’s a challenge to display the villages when there’s not enough available space, it’s something the city wants to do every year.
“Our hats go off to Keith for being willing to put in all this effort every year. It’s a lot of work,” he said.
May said on Tuesday, “I wanted to give a quick thank you to Keith Branning, the maintenance person for Max Kilpatrick, for his assistance on the building.”
Keith May’s Christmas Village is on display at 204 Byrd Ave N and will be viewable in the windows until the week after Christmas.
"Scene" - Google News
December 02, 2020 at 12:00PM
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Fair scene depicted in Christmas Village - Philadelphia Neshoba Democrat
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