Those seeking holiday cheer have visited the Rice family's front yard Christmas display with Peanuts cartoon characters for 36 years, at 2128 47th Ave. SW, a few blocks north of Admiral Way. Don is busy once again arranging and reinforcing the 6-foot or so, quarter-inch plywood figures while arranging lights while his wife Sarah decorates the inside of their home. Nearly 9,000 lights shine when completed.

"I have received Christmas cards from people who saw our display as kids, then came back with their kids to see it again," said Don. He and Sarah are avid walkers who stroll Alki and descend and ascend Admiral Way miles a day. You might call them expert Christmas decorators as they have designed Holy Names Academy's Christmas display for their annual auction for 17 years. He has been employed there as maintenance director for six years. His daughter Nikki, attended.

"Before this location, I had a Peanuts display at my parents' house in Arbor Heights, beginning in 1965 (when the half-hour hit TV show A Charlie Brown Christmas was released)," he said. "I made Charlie Brown, Lucy, Linus, and Snoopy out of cardboard. As years went by I added characters and switched to plywood, starting around 1968. Veronica, Franklin, and others were in the background of the cartoons but didn't become full-fledged (Peanuts) characters until later on.

"I have a fairly healthy collection of Peanuts memorabilia, lunch boxes original books, shirts I wear regularly," Don said. "I guess I kind of identify with Charlie Brown, but I like Linus' philosophies. That's what pulled me in."

This year the display is bittersweet. Like the sorry tree Charlie Brown chose in the TV show, the Rice's nearly 60-foot tall pine tree in their front yard is diseased, has thinned out, and will need to come down soon.

"I planted the tree the day my son, Jesse, was born, 37 years ago this May," Don said. "Arborists have told us it has white pine blister rust disease and (the fungus) will take it out. It's about half the needles now from what it was. It's a shame to lose a big tree like that. I climb the tree and put the (lighted) star up first, at about the 50-foot mark. I might get another year out of it. But it will become a safety issue and the branches will come down."

"The change in the tree has been drastic," said Nikki Rice, his daughter in Los Angeles. She is a puppet fabricator for a studio that does stop motion, and has worked on movies and television. "Last Christmas it didn't look sick. It had huge pine cones, and was massively solid. You couldn't see through it. I was back home in July when I noticed the first layer of branches were completely brown."

Nikki cherishes childhood memories of the Peanuts display.

"My brother and I used to help my dad put up the characters," she recalled. "We have a garage in the backyard and they were always stacked up top. My brother and I were pretty small when we started helping our dad. He lowered down these characters, which seemed really big when you're a kid, and you're like, "There's Snoopy coming at me!" Then I'd run with Snoopy across the front yard.

"He also plays the soundtrack to the Christmas special on loud speakers out front every year and my brother and I would sing along while doing our homework," said Nikki. "We could probably still quote every word."

"When I was toasting my older brother at his wedding I said, 'I've been looking for you big brother.' That was a line in the show that Sally said to Charlie Brown, her big brother."