Coca-Cola Christmas: A Month of Magic
Louisiana Art and Science Museum
Baton Rouge
Through December; special event scheduled Dec. 20
Walking into the Louisiana Art and Science Museum, visitors are greeted by Sprite box Christmas trees and presents. It’s no small feat. The medium-sized trees require at least 92 twelve-pack soda boxes to construct. There’s a giant train in the lobby, and up above, a Coca-Cola sleigh pulled by flying Dr. Pepper reindeer dangles from the ceiling. Around the lobby and the adjacent rooms, there seems to be more behind every corner.
This is the annual Coca-Cola Christmas display at LASM. Every year, Coca-Cola sends them the boxes, the museum preps and folds them. Coca-Cola sends someone to construct a Christmas scene. The company makes a donation to the museum, which goes toward First Free Sunday activities, advertising and general operations.
The whole display is legitimately impressive. It feels designed for the space, not a generic Christmas wonderland they pulled from a box and hauled out every year. In a separate room, Santa poses with kids in front of a massive Coca-Cola box fireplace. Similar to First Free Sunday activities, the event is attended mostly by families with young children.
The centerpiece of the Christmas display, the train, was big enough for people to run around inside and take pictures. Kids had a field day. To correspond with the giant display, the Baton Rouge Railroaders volunteered to make four different train sets.
“This building was an old train station,” Assistant Curator and museum preparator Beth Welch explained. “That’s what it was 100 years ago, and that’s why everything is trains right now.”
The hope is that kids can run around and play while the adults can stop and read about the history in their community. Welch was in the lobby doing an oil painting demonstration. and available to chat and answer questions.
Looking at the giant train and flying reindeer made me curious about the person who made it. What is their day job? How does one become the person who organizes Coca-Cola boxes for the annual display?
People want every kid exposed to art …but not as a career. Art exposure is positively linked to better education outcomes like higher rates of literacy, likelihood of graduating high school and better standardized test scores. It’s no wonder it’s a requirement for public school curriculums.
But as a kid, I didn’t know any artists or people who even worked in the arts personally. Sure, people came in to speak to my school, a stop in a larger regional tour or the like. I knew on some level that people had jobs at the local art museum and someone had to paint the art. But none of my friend’s parents were artists. None of the adults in my life were. I thought of a career in art as something that happened to a lucky few people, and the odds that that would include me were astronomically low.
Events like Coca-Cola Christmas are evidence to kids and parents alike that there’s money in the arts somewhere. Even if people don’t end up being fine artists, there are designers, people who write grants or take photos of events like this. Maybe it’ll be working for a big company or a museum as does Welch, who has an art degree.
“I’ve never starved,” she said. “I tell all the moms and dads that. I’m like ‘They’re not going to starve. They’re gonna figure it out.'”
