Decking The Halls With Christmas Lights Brightens A Dark 2020

In a normal year, Maya Robinson-Napier of Huntersville, N.C., wouldn't decorate her house for Christmas too much. Maybe a tree inside, a string of lights outside.

But this hasn't been a normal year.

Robinson-Napier lost both parents, her mother to complications from multiple sclerosis and her father to congestive heart failure. And after months of staying at home with her family because of the coronavius pandemic, she decided her husband and their sons, age three and six, needed a little holiday cheer.

Now there's a lot.

Robinson-Napier has been accumulating decorations every day like drifts of snow. Now, her front lawn is nearly unrecognizable. There's a stack of presents stretching seven feet tall on the deck, flanked by an elf and a nutcracker. There are snowflake lights and wire reindeer; ornaments; projections; a towering, inflatable Frosty the Snowman.The centerpiece: 13 gold lighted arches she and her husband crafted themselves.