Yvonne Webb

Busi­ness­man Wayne Ali nev­er ceas­es to amaze south­ern­ers every year around this time, when he trans­forms his St Joseph Vil­lage, San Fer­nan­do home in­to a Christ­mas Won­der­land.This year was no dif­fer­ent.Its been ten years since Ali start­ed this tra­di­tion of elab­o­rate­ly dec­o­rat­ing his home and open­ing it up to vis­i­tors from far and wide, just be­cause of his love for Christ­mas.

"I love Christ­mas and I just love to share that spir­it and make peo­ple hap­py," Ali ex­plained..In com­mem­o­ra­tion of his 10th an­niver­sary and al­so his birth­day, Ali il­lu­mi­nat­ed his 80-foot live Christ­mas tree, be­lieved to be the tallest in the Caribbean, with some 17,000 LED lights on No­vem­ber 5.

Among his guests, who were treat­ed to a sump­tu­ous Christ­mas din­ner, were At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan and his fam­i­ly, San Fer­nan­do May­or Mar­lene Coudray and Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion Min­is­ter Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan.Guests were en­ter­tained by Fuego Caribeno Parang Group, coun­try and west­ern singer Em­met Hen­nesy, and host Ali, with his char­ac­ter­is­tic Elvis Pres­ley im­pres­sion.

Every cor­ner of the house, roof top, court yard and pool­side, has been adorned every imag­in­able Christ­mas or­na­ments, from San­ta and his elves, to a crèche, snow man, carousel, elec­tric trains, can­dy canes, chim­ney and fire­place, wreaths and stock­ings. The on­ly thing miss­ing was the snow.

The cost, he ad­mit­ted, is ex­or­bi­tant, in the vicin­i­ty of $100,000, but even though the coun­try is not as eco­nom­i­cal­ly buoy­ant as be­fore, this has not di­min­ished his Christ­mas spir­it."I be­lieve in the tra­di­tion­al Christ­mas cel­e­bra­tion, I hate those songs which peo­ple sing about San­ta get­ting horne and So­ca San­ta storm­ing par­ty and dri­ving mo­tor car. Some things have to re­main tra­di­tion­al and this is what it is all about."

Over the week­end, some 800 peo­ple vis­it­ed the dis­play. Since No­vem­ber 5, Ali said more than 8,000 peo­ple, from the east, west, north and south, have vis­it­ed his home,The dis­play will re­main up un­til Jan­u­ary 6, 2012.