Graceland has a favor to ask, and it’s one Elvis fans have said yes to before.
On Tuesday, the team at Elvis Presley’s home in Memphis posted that Christmas at Graceland is up for a national award again. The holiday tour is nominated for Best Holiday Historic Home Tour in the USA TODAY 10Best Readers’ Choice Awards. In this contest, readers pick the winners.
That means the house needs the fans one more time.
And Graceland isn’t shy about asking. The fans have come through in this category for years now, and the streak is the part that makes people’s jaws drop. So how long has it been going?
Here’s Graceland in its own words: “Fans have voted Graceland #1 in this category every year since 2018, and we need your help to bring the title home for a ninth year in a row.”
Eight straight wins, with a ninth on the line.
Nothing has been decided yet. Voting is still open, and Graceland says you don’t get just one shot at it. “You can vote once a day, every day, until voting closes on Monday, November 30 at 11:59 AM ET.”
So a fan who really wants to help can come back every morning between now and the end of the month. If you’ve never seen the mansion dressed for the holidays, Graceland’s own video of the house glowing after dark shows you what all those fans keep cheering for.
Graceland’s own video of the mansion lit up for Christmas
The Christmas tours run every day this year from Nov. 19 through Dec. 23. People come from all over to walk through the rooms while they’re decked out for the season.
That holiday feeling goes all the way back to Elvis himself.
He loved Christmas, and he was in no hurry to let it go. Graceland’s Christmas page explains his habit: “Each year, Elvis would put up his decorations in late November and leave them up through his birthday in January.”
His birthday was Jan. 8. Plenty of families pack the ornaments away the day after New Year’s, but at Elvis’s house the season ran an extra week. He simply wasn’t ready to say goodbye to it until his own big day had come and gone.
Some of those decorations never really left, either. Back in 2015, Graceland wrote that “Elvis’ original Christmas decorations are still in use at Graceland, and the sparkly decorations stay up until his birthday.”
That’s a sweet thing to know. When visitors walk through the house in December, they’re seeing a tradition that started with Elvis and kept right on going after he was gone.
Out front, the big Nativity scene on the lawn is one of the sights people stop to admire, and this fan’s up-close video lets you see the figures in detail from your own living room.
A close look at the Nativity scene on Graceland’s lawn
The winner won’t be known until after voting closes on Nov. 30. Until then, Graceland is counting on the same fans who’ve carried it to the top every year since 2018.
If you’re one of them, you already know the drill. And if you’re new to all this, it only takes a minute a day to help Elvis’s home try for number nine.