Seventeen years of Santa at Nancy and Peter Crossan’s Maketū property

Nancy and Peter Crossan with their Christmas display. Photo / Stuart Whitaker

Maketū's Nancy and Peter Crossan (but mostly Nancy) have been putting smiles on the faces of passers-by for 17 years.

They get into the spirit of Christmas each December by adding an ever-more-elaborate display to their roadside paddock on Kaituna Road.

Peter says the original idea wasn’t theirs.

“My mother lived in Taupō and we used to go down to Taupō to visit. There was a house at Reporoa that used to put a Santa Claus on the roof every year and we used to take the kids down and the kids used to see that. We thought, that’s quite a novelty and Nancy started doing it here.”

The first year was a similar Santa on the roof, but by the second, he had moved into the paddock - hanging off a leaning power pole.

Some of the past displays in the Kaituna Rd paddock.

“So it just looked like Santa had fallen out of the sleigh and splattered into the power pole with a sack of presents in his hand,” Nancy says.

As the idea evolved, it also got bigger until Nancy now needs Peter’s help.

“Usually I could get it on the trailer and do it myself, but then we started using kiwifruit bins and I needed help,” she says.

It’s such a feature of the area that on occasions, when the display hasn’t been put out, people have come down the driveway to ask where it is.

And one year, a figure had become unseated and was face down in the paddock, prompting a concerned couple to try to “revive” him by throwing things and eventually going to the house fearing the worst.

But mostly, the display adds to the happy side of Christmas.

Nancy and Peter Crossan (but mostly Nancy) have been putting smiles on the faces of passers-by for 17 years.

“We do it because it puts a smile on people’s faces,” Nancy says.

“It’s rewarding when you see cyclists going past and they stop and take photos - it’s quite cool,” adds Peter.

Some years they have commemorated significant events such as Rugby World Cup or America’s Cup wins.

This year Santa is aboard a locomotive towing a carriage of elves and, while they have taken a bit of a battering from the recent high winds, the elves are still sitting proud, grinning back at passers-by.