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For a lot of families in Northeast Mississippi, the holidays don’t start on Thanksgiving. They start when Celebration Village opens at the Tupelo Furniture Market.
This year’s event, Sanctuary Hospice’s biggest fundraiser, runs through Saturday with more than 100 vendors. Organizers expect close to 20,000 people, and plenty of them will head home with wreaths, ornaments and gifts that need a place to go.
That’s usually when people realize the house is already full. The Halloween bins haven’t gone back up in the attic yet. The fall porch decorations are still out. And somewhere in a closet there are probably three boxes of Christmas lights nobody has untangled since January.
A little sorting now saves a lot of frustration in December. Start with what’s already out. Once Halloween is over, go through the bins before they go back up, and throw out the broken pieces and the costumes nobody will fit into next year. Then pull down the Christmas boxes and test the lights while it’s still warm enough to work in the garage. Strands that don’t light can go to the curb now instead of after you’ve wrapped them around the tree.
Think about guests too. If family is coming in for Thanksgiving or Christmas, the guest room or the bonus room is probably holding the treadmill, the extra chairs and whatever didn’t fit anywhere else.
Some Tupelo families get through the season by moving things out of the house for a few months. In Tupelo, Iron Storage runs a fully climate-controlled storage facility on South Park Street, just south of downtown and close to U.S. 45 and I-22. Its drive-up units mean you can unload a truck bed of patio furniture or a boxed artificial tree without carrying it far. Climate control is worth looking for wherever you go. As this month has shown, it can still be in the 80s here in late October, and a hot attic or metal shed is rough on candles, ornaments, wood furniture and anything with glue in it. A unit can also be a good place to keep the gifts the kids aren’t supposed to find.
Label every box by holiday and by room, and put the things you’ll need first near the front. When the decorations come down in January, it all goes back the same way, and next year starts a lot easier.
Celebration Village is open 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Thursday and Friday and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday. Tickets are $10 at the door or $8 online through Sanctuary Hospice, and all ticket proceeds go to the hospice house.
