Teddy – A Bit Drought Affected

THE makers of the iconic Christmas hay decorations south of Aberdeen said Christmas had to be cut short to Xmas this year due to the short supply of hay.

Peter Day, from All Day Concrete, said he had to break the news to Mick Day the artist.

“I had to scrape some up (hay) from the rubbish I had laying around the back this year,” said Mr Day.

“Mick Day who does the painting said he wanted enough to write ‘Christmas’, but I said we just don’t have that many mate we’re going to have to do an ‘Xmas’,” he said.

“He has some other ideas and if we had plenty of bales we were going to do something different, but we might need to wait for the drought to break first,” he said.

“Even though Teddy has nothing to do with Christmas really, he’s a happy chappy, but a bit drought affected this year,” laughed Peter.

In previous years cows have caused a modification to the display.

“Yeah, I did have an electric fence around it a couple of years ago and they did come and destroy that a little bit yeah,” he said.

“We only had the small square bales and we had ‘Merry Christmas’ but they ate a few and we had to change it around to ‘Merry Xmas’ instead then too,” said Peter.

The decoration began a few years ago after the Day’s saw a photo of one and decided to build one themselves.

Each year now the community wait for the new display.

“I don’t get out and about much, but from the beginning of November there’s always the big question ‘are you doing the bear, when are you going to do it?’ and so on,” he said.

“It gets a lot of Facebook hits,” Peter Day said.