ATWOOD, Ill. (WAND)- The town of Atwood has been seeing Santa's pop up all over residents front lawns, and it's all thanks to a TikTok trend. 

"A girl in town, Samantha Binion, she saw a TikTok video and decided that it would be really cool if we all started to do that. So she approached us and was like, are you guys interested... And yeah, they all got on board. So we all just put one 12 foot Santa Claus in their yards," said dental hygienist Samantha brown.

It originally started with a small handful of people. But then it grew into something so much more. 

"And with Facebook and Messenger, we just kept adding more people to the list. And it grew and now we've got over 30 Santa Clauses in town," said a Construction Services Supervisor with Ameren Illinois, Mitch Fleming.

People in Atwood are usually extremely eager to decorate. So participation wasn't a concern. 

"We normally have a decoration contest in town every year…we thought tis we would be really fun to bring Christmas cheer and make everybody smile as they drove through town," said Brown.

Social media isn't always the place to look for the most uplifting news. But in this case, it was the trend that brought the community together. 

"We live in a society now where there's so many negative things that you see on social media. And this was just something, obviously, that had a huge positive come out of it," said Fleming.

And the whole town has taken joy in seeing Santas all down main street

"I hear about lots of kids coming down the street and just parents referencing how it puts a smile on their face. I've heard about parents talk about how they've changed their routes just so they can drive down main street and check out the Santas around Christmas time. So again, it's just really cool to see something positive come from social media when there's just not a lot of positive out there."

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