FOLEY, Ala. — For several weeks citizens in Foley and Elberta have enjoyed a large display of Christmas decorations in and around town. With all the Christmas presents open and the new year rung in, the time has come to box up the decorations and put everything away until next year, but where do they go?

Each year, in a joint effort with Riviera Utilities, hundreds of Christmas decorations are taken out of storage and placed on lampposts.

“Foley’s decorations are the best, because they have the most,” Carol Hayes of Riviera Utilities said. “They’ve got about three to 400 that we put up for them, we also do their lights.”

Hayes and his crew also set up decorations for the towns of Elberta, Loxley, Summerdale and Silverhill, but only put up lights for some of the towns.

“It’s a big effort,” Hayes said. “It’s a combination of line crews, cable crews and tree crews to get it all up there.”

While Riviera is able to get all the towns completed in about a day, it takes many trucks to get the job done.

“Foley alone takes about four to five hours,” Hayes said. “We get all the bucket trucks out we can, it’s about eight to ten of them. We try to make it as quick as possible so we don’t disrupt traffic and keep it safe.”

Before any decorations can go up there are several steps that need to be taken.

“It’s always a lot quicker to take the decorations down than to put them up,” Elberta Public Works Supervisor Bob Broseus said. “Before they go up you gotta test them and change any broken lights, it takes a lot of time.”

While the process of taking down any decoration may be quicker, it’s not as enjoyable as putting them up.

“The guys like putting up the decorations a lot more than taking them down,” Hayes said. “You realize it’s the end of the holiday season, and the decorations had brought so much joy and happiness. They just gave Foley some extra flare.”

The respective cities bring their decorations out of storage and place each decoration by a light pole. Riviera Utilities then comes by and puts it up. The reverse happens when the decorations must come down. Each town then picks up the decorations and stores them until next year.

Foley’s large amount of decorations requires more than one storage unit.

“We’ve got a 30 by 50 space that has a loft we use for about 90 percent of the decorations,” Mark McKenzie of Foley Parks Department said. “We’ve got a lot of decorations, so we also use some storage space in a hangar at the airport.”

Elberta stores their decorations in a storage space on Victoria Street.