[12/17/2001]Chick Warner can’t remember precisely what year it was during the late 1970s when he decided not to display his lighted sleigh outside his 8 Glenwood Circle home during the holidays.

He does remember the high electricity bills and a president’s call for everyone to do their part to help end a national energy crisis. And, most of all, he remembers the disappointed girl he ran into at the grocery.

“She was so upset we didn’t put out the sleigh,” Warner said. “I explained to her that I was trying to save electricity. I said, Now, am I forgiven?’ And she just stuck out her lip and said No!'”

His young neighbor’s sunken face helped convince Warner to make his sleigh a permanent feature of Christmas in Glenwood Circle. Except for that year, he has dusted it off, decorated it with lights and filled it with oil-cloth presents every December since 1970 except that one.

“It’s tradition,” he said, mimicking the song from “Fiddler on the Roof.” “Tradition!”

But Warner and his wife, Peggy, aren’t putting the sleigh to its traditional use.

It was hitched to horses and used for winter transportation by Warner’s ancestors in Connecticut until the early 20th century, when automobiles replaced animals.

Once it was no longer used to get around in the snow, the sleigh was stored in Warner’s grandmother’s house in Sandy Hook, Conn., until the 1940s, when Warner and his brothers moved it to Vicksburg.

It didn’t go on display here until 1970, the first year Chick and Peggy Warner spent in the Glenwood Circle home that had been built by Chick Warner’s father in 1939.

“It just looked like something that should go outside at Christmas,” Chick Warner said. “So I decided to put it out.”

And Peggy Warner said people have been pleased with her husband’s decision.

“We get calls from all over about it,” she said. “People always ask when we’re going to put it out, and then we get a lot of people telling us how pretty it is.”

Not all of the Christmas decorations around town are as old as the Warners’ sleigh, but some have become as embedded in city residents’ plans for holiday drives.

Among them are Santa’s Lane, the large yard display put out annually at 3075 Freetown Road, the home of Lester Grant. Featured are cartoon characters, Santa Claus and a nativity scene.

Some subdivisions also deck themselves out with light during Christmas seasons. In Highland subdivision, off South Frontage Road between Indiana Avenue and Porters Chapel Road, each house is lighted up.

This year has seen a surge in patriotic Christmas decorations, perhaps a continuing effect of September 11. 1714 Sky Farm Ave., 916 Polk St. and 101-B Clear Creek Road in Bovina, among others, all feature displays of red, white and blue lights.