COEUR d’ALENE — It’s the day before Christmas, and all through her home, Rose Frederick's holiday flair sparkles wherever you roam.

Each ornament and stocking has been hung with care, from angels with rosy cheeks to teeny tiny teddy bears.

"Welcome to the Christmas house,” Frederick said with a smile as she gave her guests a tour and chatted a while.

"This is a happy place,” said Press photographer Loren Benoit as he inspected the decorative displays in awe.

Nearly 50 Christmas trees, from large to very small, adorn Frederick’s home, and that isn’t all.

Santas aplenty can be found about and within, playing golf, or the piano, or the violin.

Elves on shelves, snowmen and candles, garlands on bannisters, Santas on mantles.

Candy canes. Popcorn strings. Flying reindeer. It's easy to tell this is Frederick's favorite time of year.

"I love Christmas," she said. “I’ve always loved Christmas. It’s always been my favorite holiday, since I was a child."

Frederick spends the entire season decorating, beginning before Thanksgiving and continuing right up to Christmas Day.

"I couldn’t even hardly wait to get my fall stuff put away so I could start on my Christmas," she said. "I just put a few things out this morning, so I think I'm never done."

Every nook and cranny in her downtown Coeur d'Alene house is filled with holiday ornamentation she's been collecting most of her adult life, as well as some St. Nick-knacks from her childhood. She finds bargain deals in area thrift and antique stores and receives decorative gifts from friends and loved ones who know how the Christmas spirit is with her all year.

Frederick held up a snow globe with a winter scene of Santa and his reindeer soaring over a town. It was a gift from her late husband, who also knew how she cherished this season.

“My husband gave me this for Christmas one year, so it has to be out,” she said.

It was during her childhood when this love of the yuletide season really began.

"When we were going to Sunday school, we always had the nativity and we’d act out the play, and my kids were always in them,” she said. “I just like everything about Christmas, all the symbols and the songs, the trees, the bells. Everything."

As the child of a young widow, Frederick also appreciated every little thing their family shared on this special day.

"My mom raised us three kids, my brother and sister and I,” Frederick said. "We never had much, but we always had Christmas. It was Christmas Eve and my mom, she said, ‘We got to go to bed early because Santa Claus has got to come,’ so we all had to go to the outhouse because we didn’t have a bathroom, then we come back in and here’s all these presents under the tree, and my mom said, ‘Oh Santa Claus came,’” she said with a grin.

"I remember I got a pencil box full of pencils and color crayons and little tablets, cutesy little things. I was probably 7 or 8. That was one Christmas that I remembered for a long time."

The Christmas magic must be genetic, because Frederick said her daughter also makes sure her house is decorated top to bottom when Christmas time is here.

“I love it,” Frederick said, basking in the cozy glow of her holiday home. “I hate to even leave to go anywhere because I like to just sit here and look at everything.”