By Riley Worth, special to the Tribune

People living in the Albert Lea area in the 1980s and &8216;90s knew this just by driving past her and her husband Bruce&8217;s house on Keystone Drive in north Albert Lea. All winter her house was decorated in lights, and an ensemble of seasonal characters, all hand-painted by the Emerson family, inhabited the yard.

Bus tours looking at Christmas lights would roll by. A Swedish hockey team visiting the U.S. once stopped to admire. One time, Lynette remembered, she&8217;d just shut the lights off and gone to bed when she heard the door bell ring. It was a father with his daughter who was visiting. Her stay was almost over and she hadn&8217;t seen the Emersons&8217; lights. He asked if she&8217;d please turn them on momentarily. Lynette obliged, and they stood there in awe.

About five years ago they stopped decorating the outside of the house. But don&8217;t fret. Emerson hasn&8217;t lost her Christmas spirit. She&8217;s just taken her Christmas decorating fervor and changed her focus.

&8220;It&8217;s easier and warmer to decorate inside,&8221; she explained.

To see the inside of the Emersons&8217; house from Thanksgiving through February is a constant reminder that, indeed, her love for Christmas is anything but waning. A tour of the house is much like watching a classic comedy such as &8220;Airplane&8221; or &8220;The Naked Gun.&8221; To really catch all the material you&8217;re going to need to see it numerous times. If ever a home was set up to be part of a winter tour of homes, it&8217;s that of Bruce and Lynette Emerson.

The cornerstones of her designs are the Christmas trees she decorates in various themes. This year she&8217;s got 14 trees, fewer than in past years. Of course, that&8217;s just counting just the ones she decorates (some type of qualifier was needed to get an accurate count).

&8220;I love &8216;em,&8221; Emerson said. &8220;I&8217;d keep them up all year if I could.&8221;

As you walk in the front door a tree decorated in Santa Claus ornaments greets you. That tree stays up year-round, but changes themes based on the holiday. In the living room to the right behind Bruce&8217;s chair is another Santa Claus-themed tree.

Walking straight ahead from the entrance area takes you into the dining area, where stands the commanding officer in this army of trees. It&8217;s a candy cane-themed tree with numerous handmade ornaments crafted by Lynette&8217;s mother Helene. The undercarriage of this tree is plum full of presents, with a pair of Santa legs sticking out, as if he&8217;s under the tree doing fix-it work on a few of the presents.

On the fireplace mantel to the left of the tree are eight mini-figurines of Santa and others. They move, as if finishing their last-minute Christmas chores. Hanging above the fireplace is a decorated wooden red sled, the sled the Lynette used as a child.

She&8217;s dedicated to using resources she already has on hand whenever possible; it&8217;s more special that way, she said.

In the spare bedroom is a rabbit-themed tree. Her bedroom has a tree decorated in pinks and blues. Husband&8217;s room: white tree with stars.

The cabin-themed basement has &8212; you guessed it &045; a cabin-themed tree, with a couple acorn-adorned trees, a snowflake tree and one she calls &8220;the ugly tree,&8221; which has ornaments that resemble peanuts. Missing this year from her prized collection is one she said was one of her favorite trees; it was a sports-themed tree, which sat appropriately in the game room. It had pool sticks coming out of the center and was decorated with Ping-Pong balls, darts and other pool-related artifacts. One of her daughters needed a tree because, well, you can&8217;t go without a tree, by golly. So Lynette gave her one of hers. The number has been higher than the 14 she has decorated now, although she&8217;s never truly counted.

And, of course, she has her eye on a replacement tree. It&8217;s called an upside-down tree. Her face lights up when she talks about it, and explanations of it include plenty of hand gesturing. She has just the theme ready for when she does buy it, too. In addition to her Christmas stuff, she also has a &8220;Wizard the Oz&8221; collection, which is just waiting to adorn a tree.

Emerson, a longtime employee of the school district, is an intensely private person who said she has never decorated to impress others or for status. She does it for numerous reasons, including in hopes that her Christmas cheer will rub off on others. It&8217;s become who she is.

&8220;I hope people see (my decorations) and get in the spirit,&8221; she said.

It doesn&8217;t take long to trace the evolution of the spirit in Emerson. Look straight up the family (Christmas) tree to Lynette&8217;s mother Helene Nelson. When Helene met Vic, her husband of 66 years, he told Helene his family never celebrated Christmas. That just didn&8217;t make sense to Helene; she&8217;d grown up in a big, poor family, but had always celebrated Christmas.

&8220;I vowed as long as I&8217;m with Vic, he&8217;s going to have Christmas,&8221; said the 87-year-old Helene, who always put a tree in the bathroom and one in each kids&8217; bedroom. &8220;I did it for my hubby. He loves it, too.&8221;

Helene still decorates her trees herself, although she admits she can&8217;t keep up with her daughter.

&8220;We always think what she does is neat,&8221; Helene said.

Lynette has one grandson, 6-year-old Jayden who loves to visit grandma&8217;s house, and as he does every year he&8217;ll be there this Christmas.

&8220;He loves it,&8221; Lynette said. &8220;One year he helped me decorate. All the ornaments were in one spot on the front of the tree.&8221;

Also in attendance, as always, will be Bruce and Lynette&8217;s daughters Traci Emerson and Amy Lambertson, which begs the question: Are they into Christmas decorations?

&8220;Not as much as I&8217;d wanted them to be,&8221; Lynette said. &8220;But I told them they&8217;re going to have to because they&8217;re going to inherit it all someday.&8221;