Holiday decorating: Behind the method to the madness

During the mad rush on Christmas decorating day at West Baden Springs Hotel a few weeks ago, one of the staffers on the project was needing some direction, scanned the massive atrium and wondered aloud, “where’s Kim?”

Good question. Kim Holland could be anywhere and everywhere. That tends to happen this time of the year when you’re the one steering a holiday decorating project that includes close to a dozen huge Christmas trees and covers all the interior spaces across French Lick Resort’s 3,000 acres.

Decorating the West Baden tree requires a
no-fear approach atop a 50-foot lift.

Decorating on such a scale can also take you to some interesting places, whether it be beyond midnight or perched in a lift 50 feet above the ground and contorting your body to nestle each bow and ornament into place by hand. Holland, the floral department manager for French Lick Resort, may be the most in-demand person at the resort in November when the grounds light up with the sights of the season. Catch her if you can. We were able to check in with her two days before Thanksgiving as she scurried around making final touches.

If there’s one gem of wisdom Holland can impart to the rest of us in the midst of our own holiday decorating, it’s that planning is crucial — and there’s no reason to feel overwhelmed.

“Stressing about it, I think I did a little bit (in the past), but there’s nothing really hard,” Holland said, while snipping flower stems for hundreds of arrangements used as table centerpieces two days later for the resort’s Thanksgiving meals. “It’s just having that timeline is the only thing. That crunch time: That’s the challenging part.”

It can get a tad disorienting for Holland and her crew, because Christmas precedes Thanksgiving on the calendar, at least in the decorating domain.

All the Christmas touches at French Lick Springs Hotel and West Baden Springs Hotel start to appear the first week of November and are wrapped up by the hotels’ annual tree lighting ceremonies the weekend before Thanksgiving. Since Thanksgiving at the resort has ballooned over the years from a few hundred and now a few thousand meals, it has Holland and her floral team scrambling more and more in those few days between.

“It goes straight from Christmas decorating to Thanksgiving,” she said, “so that keeps us pretty busy.”

To the tune of workdays that stretch until 9:30 at night during the peak busy stretches. Comparatively, though, that’s not so bad.

Lights, ornaments and decorations
cover nearly every inch of the tree
on the second level of the
Event Center.

“I’ve stayed up until 1 or 2 o’clock in the morning in the past. So we have gotten better – a better team and more help, so that goes a lot quicker now. Thank goodness,” Holland said, laughing.

Holland does have some favorites among the holiday adornments, and they’re not necessarily the biggest ones such at the 40-foot Christmas tree in the West Baden atrium (which takes about eight hours for her to decorate). Holland's choices: the reindeer barn and the tree that are in proximity on the second level of the Event Center at French Lick Springs Hotel, and the tree that stretches floor to ceiling in the valet lobby by French Lick Casino.

“And it’s just an ordinary tree,” she said. “But I love how the color, I like how everything pops with that.”

And all those twinkling aesthetics that Holland helps create are more than enough to tide her over — when it comes to decorating for the holidays at her own house….

“I don’t,” she said with a laugh. “My Christmas consists of one Christmas tree that I put up, and normally it’s up after my Christmas presents are wrapped and ready to go. But doing all this kind of takes that out, and I get to see it all here.”

You can, too, as French Lick Resort stays lit up for the holidays past New Year’s Day. Check out the full slate of remaining holiday happenings in the 50 Days of Lights.