Dreaming Of A White Christmas

Maxine White and Ady White (not related) make Christmas happen. They’re possibly Suffolk’s closest thing to Santa’s elves.

- Jayne Lindill

Felixstowe in July. Maxine White’s shiny, black van slides past bearing the name of her company,

The Christmas Decorators. It’s a unexpected reminder that the season of goodwill is a mere 24 weeks away.

Most of us have thoughts only of barbecues, holidays and hosepipe bans. Maxine’s mind, however, is on lights, garlands and oversized trees. It might be mid summer, but she’s already planning what Christmas will look like for shops, shopping malls, town centres, offices and homes throughout Suffolk, Norfolk and north Essex.

Fast forward to about the time this magazine is published and Maxine is putting those plans into action, bringing sparkle and shine to East Anglia’s high streets and homes. Her days (and evenings) are long, the work hard, the responsibility enormous and the expectation daunting, but she loves it.

“It’s one of the best jobs there is,” she says. This is Maxine’s second Christmas as The Christmas Decorator for the eastern region. She’s a franchise owner, part of a national company, founded about 14 years ago by Liverpool couple Nick and Sarah Bolton, who came up with the idea while they were running a restaurant in Aspen, Colorado.

One winter, business was rather slow, so Sarah put her design talent to use and went to town with the restaurant’s Christmas decorations. Business immediately picked up and soon regular customers (including one or two celebs) were asking them to decorate their homes.

When the couple returned home to the UK they decided to create a business out of their Aspen experience,and so The Christmas Decorators was born. Maxine got involved six years ago, when she helped out a friend who was a Christmas decorator in Essex. “I really enjoyed it,” she says. Four years later the Suffolk franchise became available and, deciding it was just the opportunity she had been looking for, took it on.