On June 26, 1957, Elvis Presley spent his first night at Graceland. He’d bought the house in Memphis that March, and it wasn’t just for him. It was for his mom and dad, plus his grandmother, too.
So by the time the weather turned cold that year, the whole family was under one roof.
Graceland’s own blog puts it in plain words: “Elvis purchased Graceland in the spring of 1957, so that first Christmas at his new home was a special one.” Graceland calls that December the family’s “first Christmas at Graceland.” His parents, Gladys and Vernon, were living in a home their son had bought for them, and the place was brand new to all of them.
It was a full month for Elvis. That same December, his Army draft notice officially arrived. But he still had a house to get ready, and he clearly wanted the front of it to say something.
Graceland made its own episode about how Elvis celebrated the season at home, so it’s the easiest way to see the mansion dressed the way he liked it.
Graceland’s own look at Elvis and Christmas at home
With Christmas a couple of weeks off, Elvis went shopping for the lawn. According to Graceland’s blog, “On December 12, he purchased a Santa and sleigh yard decoration that read, “Merry Christmas to All, Elvis.””
So it was a Santa with his sleigh and reindeer, and the holiday greeting was signed with Elvis’s own name, right there on his front lawn.
He paid $300 for it from the Bain Sign Company. And Graceland didn’t let it go. “We still display that sign,” the blog says.
Angie Marchese is Graceland’s archivist, the person in charge of Elvis’s collection. She told WMC Action News 5 in Memphis in 2021, “The lawn ornaments that you see, the Santa and the reindeer, that was Elvis’ very first lawn ornament”
One visitor filmed a walk through Elvis’s personal Christmas decorations at Graceland, and it lets you take your time looking around the way a fan on the tour would.
A fan’s tour of Elvis’s Christmas decorations at Graceland
The sign did take a break for a while. “The Santa and sleigh sign went into a brief retirement in the 1960s,” Graceland says. In those years Elvis decorated the lawn with a Nativity scene and aluminum Christmas trees. When the company that leased those displays to him closed, Graceland bought them so his tradition could keep going.
Marchese says the Nativity scene grew, too. “He had a smaller one and then the following year went to a bigger version that we still use today”
Another visitor filmed Graceland’s Nativity scene, so you can see that display with your own eyes.
Graceland’s Nativity scene, filmed by a visitor
Inside the house, Graceland says Elvis liked red drapes at Christmas. He also had a white nylon tree that turned on its stand and played carols, hung with red ornaments.
Gladys passed away the next summer, and with Elvis away in the Army in Germany for the next two Christmases, 1957 was the only one she spent at Graceland.
The Santa outlasted the aluminum trees and the leasing company, and Graceland still displays it. Elvis picked it out about two weeks before his first Christmas in the house, and as Marchese tells it, it was his very first lawn ornament.