One of the houses included on the interactive map of decorated properties (photo courtesy of Susan Borthwick)

By Liam Verster

Deck the Halls

Grande Prairie woman creates map of festive houses for Christmas light tours

Nov 21, 2020 | 7:00 AM

A Grande Prairie woman has created a Facebook group with a goal of collecting addresses of festive and decorated houses in and around the Swan City, so that families and cohorts can organize safe Christmas light tours.

Susan Borthwick has created the Facebook group GP 2020 lockdown lights by Subdivision to find out who is decorating their houses and properties, and create an easy to access map for people to use to plan fun outings.

Borthwick has a few young kids, and says she was inspired to create the group because of their excitement over the inflatable decorations in the yard.

“So we have a few inflatables from last year, and now this year we bought a 12 foot snowman, so [the kids] were really excited when we put it up,” says Borthwick.

“And I thought ‘you know what, if my kids are this happy and we’re at our home, then I’d love to see the other kids.’ And I know there’s a little guy across the street, and he right away had to put his boots on and come out and look [at the snowman].”

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She adds that people don’t need to go all out in order to take part in this.

“Everybody that has lights or even a Christmas ornament in a tree outside. I think that we should be able to go around and see everybody that has their decorations up.”

Borthwick says she’s thinking of doing some sort of ‘Best Decorated’ competition, with members of the group voting for their favorites, but that’s still just an idea at this point.

She adds that this is a safe way to celebrate and share some Christmas cheer this year.

“If we can stay at home and decorate our houses and put smiles on people’s faces, then I think that’s a pretty good thing to do for Christmas 2020.”