Atlas Green would rather be locked up than live in a city.

No bones about it.

Green loves the country. That’s where his home is and his heart.

“I’m happy and satisfied right where I am,” Green said. “I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else. The city is not for me.”

Green Acres is the place for him.

Green lives just off Highway 125 below Brundidge and he’s found a way to say, “Merry Christmas” to passersby in a country-appreciation kind of way.

For about 15 years, Green, his wife, Rosie, and son, Huey, have combined their efforts to put together a unique, outdoor Christmas display that is both a celebration of the season and a tribute to their way of life.

“I pull the tractor and the peanut picker out in the pasture and leave the rest to my wife and son,” Green said, with a smile.

The “rest” is the challenge to outline the tractor and the picker with colorful Christmas lights and put Santa Claus in the cab. Santa knows better than anyone that “Nothing runs like a Deere.”

“It’s not all that hard to get the lights the way you want them except the lights come on at alternating times so that it looks like the wheels on the tractors and picker are turning and the peanuts are being picked,” Huey Green said. “We’ve been doing this a long time and we like doing it. It’s part of our Christmas.”

Atlas Green said the tractor and peanut picker displays are his family’s Christmas tradition.

“We don’t do anything else that I would say is tradition other than Christmas dinner,” he said. “We always have Christmas dinner with somebody and it’s not always family. For me, for us, Christmas is about giving to others. To me, that’s what Christmas is all about and that’s what I enjoy doing at Christmas.”

Sharing their love of country with those who travel along the stretch of highway between Brundidge and Tarentum maybe be “the” Christmas tradition for the Greens. But they are tradition-rich when it comes to Thanksgiving.

Each year on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, they host a syrup making and hog killing at Green Acres. There’s no need to say “y’all come” because they couldn’t beat folks away with a stick even if they wanted to, which they don’t.

“We like the syrup making and hog killing at Thanksgiving but, when Christmas comes, we just like to keep things simple in a country kind of way,” Green said.