Morgan City Christmas event is Thursday

Staff Report
Morgan City’s Christmas lighting event on Brashear Avenue will be at 6 p.m. Thursday. The 2018 event will be a hard act to follow.
That’s when the city government unveiled a specially crafted Christmas display by Morgan City native Lee Romaire, an Emmy-winning artist.
For years, Santa stood tall in the bow of the Spirit of Morgan City shrimp boat in the Brashear median. Romaire added to the scene with white alligators to draw the boat as reindeers draw Santa’s sleigh.
Here’s the way Romaire’s studio described the new display:
“The Cajun-themed sculptures include a ‘life-sized Santa toting a toy bag the size of a small car,’ Romaire said. Santa’s ‘reindeer’ are three gators up to 10-feet long sporting unique, Louisiana-inspired ‘antlers.’ The special display – a year-long project for 15 special-effects artists and designers – also includes 10 elves, loads of colorful presents and more. Romaire grew up with the annual Christmas display prominently placed in the middle of Morgan City. ‘It always inspired me as a child,’ he said, ‘so, I wanted to do something to excite people and spark creativit y in a new generation of kids.’
A part of the display even went viral on social media.
Instead of reindeer antlers, the gators drawing Santa’s boat have crabs, their claws in the air, atop their heads. Close-cropped pictures of the crab antlers showed up on Facebook pages across the country.