Distinctive holiday reindeer multiply in south Tampa

TAMPA — The reindeer first appeared in Bayshore Beautiful eight years ago, said the neighbor who started it all. Since then, pairs of wooden deer have steadily spread from yard to yard, lining streets around El Prado Boulevard each holiday season.

Four days before Christmas this year, Jeff Sweet stood on a neighbor’s lawn doing some quick math. Making 16 reindeer in one marathon day of flying sawdust and neighborly camaraderie — his annual post-Thanksgiving tradition — means the herd has now grown to about 128 deer, “give or take.”

“Yeah, that’s pretty good,” said Sweet, a general contractor, “but my goal, my dream, is to have so many reindeer all over this neighborhood and all south Tampa that there’s reindeer everywhere.”

The reindeer arrive at their new homes as blank slates for customization. There are now pink and green, tropical-themed reindeer, stars and stripes reindeer, “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation”-themed reindeer, University of Florida reindeer, a Tom Brady reindeer (previously a Nikita Kucherov reindeer) and some Pittsburgh Steelers reindeer around the corner.

Despite the high cost of wood these days, and plenty of inquiring passers-by, Sweet refuses to sell them. He only gives them away, and only through word of mouth. When he hears that someone wants a pair, they might just show up.

“I wake up one day, look out my window and there they are on my lawn,” said Trent Taylor, who moved in about six months back.

Despite the individual customizations, the reindeer all share one distinctive trait. The males are somewhat “anatomically correct.”

“Well, that’s very important,” Sweet said, drawing laughter from a group of reindeer-owning neighbors who’d gathered to chat in a driveway.

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He also noted that due to the size of the pencil he uses to trace the reindeer cutouts, their “parts” are growing by about an eighth of an inch each year.

The neighbors said the reindeer are just Sweet’s way of spreading joy, community and his sense of humor in what’s become an uncommonly close group of neighboring friends.

“We can all use more holiday spirit — and laughter,” said Jeff Sweet’s wife, Kelly Sweet.

New to the neighborhood’s menagerie this year: giant wooden caribou. That wasn’t Sweet, but another neighbor, though the new animals do share some distinctive traits. Sweet said he approves.