Staff Writer

It’s a very Vire Christmas in Old Orchard Beach.

Longtime residents and Christmas enthusiasts Louis “Pete” and Noella Vire love sharing the holiday spirit with everyone they know. This year, they spread the joy a little further by donating a nearly 40-foot tree for the Old Orchard Beach town Christmas tree.

  The Vires bought the tree for $60 in Scarborough in 1976. When they planted it in their front yard, it was the same height as their young daughter. As the tree grew, Pete Vire faithfully decorated it each Christmas until 12 years ago.

   “It outgrew me,” he said. “I’ve had it since 1976. We had no room on the lawn, so it was time.”

   “It was higher than the house and bigger than the lawn, so we decided to share it with the town,” Noella Vire added. “It made me feel good because our whole family was with us (when it was cut down). It was another celebration.”

  For the Vires, Christmas is all about family – and decorations. Married 51 years, Pete and Noella Vire and their eight children, 15 grandchildren and five great-grandchildren have created Christmas traditions that focus on celebrating together.

Each year, the Vires have faithfully added to their extensive holiday collection that transforms their home into a Christmas wonderland. Noella Vire said she and her husband began their collection 53 years ago by exchanging oversized Christmas cards the first year they were dating.

  Pete Vire said the cards cost $1 at Hallmark. Now, the couple tucks the cards at the top of their elaborate Christmas village each year. Nearby sits the old-fashioned Santa and a manger they added to their collection on their first Christmas as a married couple.

The Vire’s Christmas village and display fill the front two rooms of their homes and spill over into the halls, entryway and front lawn. A hillside created with boxes, tables and white fabric displays hundreds of houses, figurines and a working train. Other displays include wooden nutcrackers, delicate angels, Santas, ornaments and figurines that dance, talk, read books and play music. Christmas music plays softly in the background throughout December.

Noella Vire – who was born two days before Christmas – said she begins decorating her home just after Halloween and finishes in early December. She starts by wrapping her framed photos and paintings in Christmas paper, then unpacks crate after crate of decorations.

“I think about this all year,” Noella Vire said. “It’s all I think about at night once I start. Where will I put this, how will I plug in that.”

   Pete Vire estimates their collection has “well over 4,000” pieces. The collection includes handmade gifts from their daughters, friends and children Noella Vire has babysat over the years. Other ornaments came from friends who have died, as gifts from loved ones or from yard sales. Stockings and Santa hats from their grandchildren hang alongside ornaments made by Noella Vire’s grandmother.

 “Everything in here has meaning to it,” Pete Vire said.

 Noella Vire said she can’t choose a favorite decoration, but has a soft spot for “any Santa Claus.”

“They’re all our favorites,” Pete Vire said. “Anything that’s Christmas, we enjoy. I cannot pass up a set of lights at a yard sale.”

While Noella Vire works on the inside, her husband spends hours outside creating one-of-a-kind light displays. Their yard features trees made from PVC pipes wrapped in lights and, for the first time, ornaments Pete Vire created from old bicycle parts.

“She’ll see me sitting here in a daze looking outside and she knows the wheels are turning,” Pete Vire said of creating new outdoor decorations.

As much as the Vires love decorating for the holidays, they said they most look forward to the traditions they have created with their family. Each Thanksgiving, women in the family exchange ornaments. Noella Vire said the family started that tradition after her daughters were married.

Every year the whole Vire family spends a day going from house to house to celebrate until they reach the home of Noella Vire’s 93-year-old mother in Biddeford. At each house, Noella and Pete Vire hide an ornament for the family to find when they return home from the Christmas caravan, she said.

Pete Vire said he and his wife enjoy seeing the looks on the faces of their family and friends when they step inside their home each year. Though the display looks different each Christmas, their grandchildren have still figured out how to turn on all the musical decorations at the same time.

“It drives you crazy,” he said with a laugh.

Staff Writer Gillian Graham can be reached at 282-4337, ext. 213.