Trimming your Christmas tree and hanging wreaths on doors can be super tiring, right? It’s not easy trying to hang ornaments with one hand while sipping a candy cane martini with the other. And lighting 100 pine scented tea lights is basically CrossFit. But the next time you find yourself patting yourself on the back for changing your iPhone’s background to one of those burning yule logs, think of Cathy Carson.
Carson is a holiday decorator for Disneyland. (You may have heard of it. It’s slightly larger than your home.) POPSUGAR interviewed her to find out what it takes to be a theme park decker of halls. And it sounds exhausting.
Here are 5 secrets we bet you didn’t know.
It’s been over a decade since the last Christmas tree got swapped
Main Street has had the same Christmas tree since 2007. Says Carson: “The branches are molded differently, so it looks more natural, and there are fewer branches, fewer ornaments. So there are about 1,500 ornaments and 3,500 lights.”
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The tree is…large
It’s 60 feet. “It’s actually the same base as the old, but we just had brand-new branches manufactured,” says Carson.
The biggest challenge in decorating for Christmas? Getting it up overnight
“We are just very well organized,” says Carson, “like when we go to Main Street, everyone breaks into their own little team and everybody has a job, and we get that job done, and at the end of the night it’s done. We just work one land at a time. We do New Orleans, then we move on to Frontierland, Toontown, etc. We are very methodical.”
The decorating staff is small
There are only 10 full-time people in the department.
It’s almost time to start planning Christmas 2019
According to Carson, planning for next year’s holiday decor starts as soon as they take down 2018’s decorations. “As soon as Christmas is over, we’ll take down in January. We will clean up the warehouse a little bit, put things away, and in February, we start planning for next year.”
