{"id":453567,"date":"2025-12-17T16:17:11","date_gmt":"2025-12-17T16:17:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/453567\/"},"modified":"2025-12-17T16:17:11","modified_gmt":"2025-12-17T16:17:11","slug":"wreath-on-surf-shack-lights-up-christmas-at-windansea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/453567\/","title":{"rendered":"Wreath on surf shack lights up Christmas at Windansea"},"content":{"rendered":"

LA JOLLA \u2013 Christmas has come for La Jolla\u2019s iconic Surf Shack<\/a> as community volunteer group Friends of Windansea<\/a> has placed a holiday wreath on the storied landmark, which has been a beacon for surfing and the aloha spirit since its construction in 1946.<\/p>\n

Melinda Merryweather of Friends has been designing its Christmas wreath for more than 30 years. With the help of Jim\u00a0Neri, Debbie\u00a0Beaches, and Kip Ives, the group kept the holiday tradition alive again this year.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love Christmas and do a huge tree,\u201d Merryweather said of how the storied structure\u2019s wreath-laying tradition got started. \u201cBut the shack looked sad at\u00a0Christmas. So I decided it needed some Christmas spirit.\u201d<\/p>\n

The shack \u2014 one of San Diego\u2019s oldest and most prominent landmarks \u2014 is a simple hut shelter built of eucalyptus tree trunks for posts and covered by Canary Island palm fronds. It was first constructed in 1946 by Woody Ekstrom, Fred Kenyon, and Don Okey, along with a few friends and veterans from\u00a0World War II. <\/p>\n

The shack has been destroyed and rebuilt a few times over the years. Just 52 years after its construction in 1998, it was officially designated as historical by the San Diego Historical Resources Board<\/a>. Its plaque reads: \u201cHistorical Landmark No. 358, Surf Shack at WindanSea Beach Built by Returning WW II Surfers For Shade and Aloha 1953 The City of San Diego.\u201d<\/p>\n

The shack has become so embedded in local lore that it\u2019s now a symbol of not only the beach itself, but of a longstanding, deeply rooted local surfing tradition.<\/p>\n

In the\u00a0beginning, Merryweather said she decorated the shack for Christmas by just collecting\u00a0greens that looked like they would last and tying them all together. <\/p>\n

Recent technological additions have improved the display. For the second consecutive year, the shack\u2019s solar-powered Christmas wreath will now light up at night.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen my son would hang them,\u201d she said, adding she also helped\u00a0designate the\u00a0shack as historic almost 30 years ago \u2014 a designation that has a deep personal and spiritual meaning for her.<\/p>\n

\u201cI spent my youth under it in the summer,\u201d she said. \u201cIt was created by surfers when they came back from the war. There was not much at Windansea in those days except for one of the best waves in the world and a\u00a0hotel. They built [the shack] for shade and aloha.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was able to do a wreath for almost ten years with no one knowing. But as it started getting larger, the word got out, and now with the help of Friends of Windansea, it has\u00a0gotten bigger over the\u00a0years. <\/p>\n

\u201cTo our surfing community, the shack is like our\u00a0church. So it is fitting we have some love on it at Christmas.\u201d<\/p>\n

READ NEXT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LA JOLLA \u2013 Christmas has come for La Jolla\u2019s iconic Surf Shack as community volunteer group Friends of…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":453568,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5134],"tags":[5229,1582,276,208033,3548,3549,7264,208034,71777,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,208035],"class_list":{"0":"post-453567","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-friends-of-windansea","12":"tag-la-jolla","13":"tag-san-diego","14":"tag-sandiego","15":"tag-surf-shack","16":"tag-surfing","17":"tag-united-states","18":"tag-united-states-of-america","19":"tag-unitedstates","20":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","21":"tag-us","22":"tag-usa","23":"tag-windansea"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115735812246425338","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=453567"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453567\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/453568"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=453567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=453567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=453567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}