LA JOLLA – Christmas has come for La Jolla’s iconic Surf Shack as community volunteer group Friends of Windansea 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.
Melinda Merryweather of Friends has been designing its Christmas wreath for more than 30 years. With the help of Jim Neri, Debbie Beaches, and Kip Ives, the group kept the holiday tradition alive again this year.
“I love Christmas and do a huge tree,” Merryweather said of how the storied structure’s wreath-laying tradition got started. “But the shack looked sad at Christmas. So I decided it needed some Christmas spirit.”
The shack — one of San Diego’s oldest and most prominent landmarks — 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 World War II.
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. Its plaque reads: “Historical Landmark No. 358, Surf Shack at WindanSea Beach Built by Returning WW II Surfers For Shade and Aloha 1953 The City of San Diego.”
The shack has become so embedded in local lore that it’s now a symbol of not only the beach itself, but of a longstanding, deeply rooted local surfing tradition.
In the beginning, Merryweather said she decorated the shack for Christmas by just collecting greens that looked like they would last and tying them all together.
Recent technological additions have improved the display. For the second consecutive year, the shack’s solar-powered Christmas wreath will now light up at night.
“Then my son would hang them,” she said, adding she also helped designate the shack as historic almost 30 years ago — a designation that has a deep personal and spiritual meaning for her.
“I spent my youth under it in the summer,” she said. “It 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 hotel. They built [the shack] for shade and aloha.
“I 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 gotten bigger over the years.
“To our surfing community, the shack is like our church. So it is fitting we have some love on it at Christmas.”
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