IN 2003, Durban North resident Annie Moody started a Christmas tradition that would light up the festive season.

Moody, who owns and runs Annie’s Busy Beez Baby Care and Preschool on Romsey Grove (Durban North), decorated her school with Christmas lights.

In time, the entire outside and yard of the school would be covered in Christmas lights in various shapes, sizes and colours.

“Christmas is my favourite time of the year, and this tradition started in 2003. That first year, we put up a bell and a Merry Christmas sign, but as the years have gone on, I’ve continued adding to the collection, and we just kept adding more. This year, for example, we’ve added extra lights on the roof of the school. The idea was always to have a space for the public to view and get into the festive spirit,” she said.

Moody also installed a Santa letterbox outside the school as a way to encourage Durbanites to write to Santa for Christmas.

“As a little girl, there was nothing like this, and when I had my own daughters, I thought, ‘Why not add to the excitement around the holidays?’ I see how excited the children are when they post their letters to Santa. I felt the community needed something like that. On average, I clean out the letterbox four or five times a week because we and Santa get so many letters.

“I’ve also asked parents to include email addresses because each person who writes to Santa gets an email back from the North Pole. I wanted to make it special for the children. The way the community have responded to both the lights and the letterbox has been phenomenal. I often get stopped and asked when the lights are going up – it’s wonderful to have that level of love shown for us,” she said.

The lights stay on until the first week of January and are on every day from 18:30 to 22:30.