Decorating to the Beat of This Year’s Theme

In the South, Christmas preparations start early. And there’s no better way to get into the seasonal spirit than listening to your favorite holiday tunes while you deck the halls. This year’s Southern Christmas Show theme, Sounds of Christmas, aims to delight visitors with a sensory experience from the moment they step inside the show’s Front Entrance.

Show Manager, Jennifer Smetana, says that a lot of thoughtful planning goes into how to bring a more abstract concept like music to life. She knows that many visitors travel to the Southern Christmas Show each year with friends and family, often wearing matching holiday sweaters and reindeer headbands to take their annual Christmas card photos. So the show’s Front Entrance needs to be a magical experience filled with aspirational design that stays fresh and new.

Visitors should expect to find more architecturally hard lines this year that mimic the shapes of musical objects in the welcoming space. A towering Christmas tree will be suspended from the ceiling in the middle of the area, its outer form resembling guitar strings, with a collection of intriguing decorations and instruments hanging inside. Sheet music will adorn the walls with the notes to some favorite holiday songs.

As a special treat, three Trans-Siberian Orchestra songs, Christmas Canon, Christmas Eve/Sarajevo, and A Mad Russian’s Christmas will play on a loop. Holiday lights will twinkle in different areas of the display in time with the music. Live musicians will also be on site to perform parts of the songs during all of the hours of the show’s run.

“The entrance will be all about the movement of music,” Smetana said. “We want to take the musical elements of the holidays that our guests love and bring them to life through décor.”

Dreaming up the show’s Front Entrance design and making it a reality is a year-long process. In fact, ideas for the next year’s design theme are being brought up for consideration while the team is still working on the current year’s show. The design for the Sounds of Christmas Front Entrance is the brainchild of a couple from Eastern North Carolina who also have worked on museum designs across the state. They build a replica of the Front Entrance design on their property at home and practice constructing it, taking it apart and putting it back together again to make sure everything is perfect for the show.

Smetana hopes that the entrance sparks the joy, nostalgia, and anticipation that Christmas music has a way of bringing to life.

“Whatever is going on in your life, we want you to leave it behind and enjoy yourself and the magic of the season when you’re here,” she said.

This year’s Southern Christmas Show will run at The Park Expo and Conference Center in Charlotte from November 11 – 22. Buy your discounted tickets early online. We can’t wait to celebrate the wonders of the holiday season with you soon!