THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, December 18, 1994 TAG: 9412160226
SECTION: SUFFOLK SUN PAGE: 02 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: Faces and Places
SOURCE: Susie Stoughton
LENGTH: Medium: 76 lines
Each Christmas, Betty Long decorates her house on Courtland's Main Street - hanging a wreath with red bows from each window and draping garlands intertwined with tiny white lights across the mantels, on the bannisters, along the railings of the second-floor porch and around the double front doors.
She puts tiny white lights on the boxwoods in front of the pre-Civil War house and runs strands around the shrubs down the sides of the long front lawn. Then she hangs red bells from the eaves of the porches and places her six-year collection of stuffed bears in every nook and cranny.
Bears are everywhere - sitting in the wicker porch furniture, poking through each baluster of the staircase just inside the front doors, lining each side of the entrance into the restored 1856 house and in each of the four bedrooms.
Then she pulls out the huge, wooden sleigh that she cut out with a scroll saw last year and the eight not-so-tiny reindeer plus Rudolph and positions them on either side of the long front walkway.
And in the evenings after work, she bakes cookies, cakes and banana nut bread, fixes ham biscuits and chicken salad tarts till midnight.
Finally, about two weeks before Christmas, she throws open the double glass doors of the two-story frame home and invites the whole town in for a party.
``This is Courtland's Christmas house,'' said Long a few days after this year's celebration.
Some say that going to the Christmas open house at the Longs is almost like going to Coleman's Nursery in Portsmouth. There are decorations everywhere, to be sure, in this Christmas wonderland.
She and her husband, Ed, love to share the historic house with others.
``That's our Christmas,'' she said. ``And the town really appreciates what we've done to the old house. The people of the town just love it, especially the older people who used to come in the house to visit.''
Betty Long, retail manager of the Peanut Patch, loves to bake, spending hours in the evenings preparing food for her countless guests. She has no idea how many will come. The public is welcome, and word-of-mouth invitations spread quickly.
Last year about 100 people came, she said. This year more than twice that many crowded into the two-story house, the Longs' home for nearly five years.
And she loves to decorate, coming up with new ideas each year to bedeck the high-ceilinged rooms she and Ed are slowly restoring - a room at a time.
Everywhere, there are lights, garlands, bows and hundreds of bears - white ones, brown ones, big ones and little ones in the house and on the porch.
``One of my daughters says, `If it doesn't move, Mom's going to decorate it,' '' said Long, who keeps a bedroom for each of the couple's three grown children who grew up in Portsmouth and Sunbury, N.C.
Last fall she used an old scroll saw to cut out the reindeer and sleigh, then made an unusual request of her husband, saying, ``I know what I want for Christmas. I want a scroll saw and a band saw. And I want it right now.''
A couple of days later, she had her tools and quickly finished the reindeer that now stand on the lawn beside the Post Office.
When they started putting decorations on the porch and the lawn, people warned that someone would take them or damage them, she said. But they've never had any problem with vandalism or theft.
``My idea of life is if you can't enjoy something you have in the manner you want to, you don't need it,'' Long said.
Passers-by in the older section of town admire the decorations.
She and her husband, who commutes to the Norfolk Naval Base, enjoy company.
``People in Franklin and Courtland know that any time my double doors are open, you're welcome to come and see my house,'' she said. ILLUSTRATION: Staff photo by MICHAEL KESTNER
Betty Long covers her house in decorations every year creating a
Christmas wonderland.
by CNB