By FINN HARTNETT

Staff writer

While baseball and apple pie generally are held up as the symbols that define America, viewership for the national pastime has been declining for 30 years, and apple pie is far from the country’s favorite dish.

Perhaps two better symbols would be fast food and Christmas.

Is there anything more American, after all, than sitting down with 2½ kids to open presents under the tree, or rolling up to the drive-thru in a red pickup truck for McNuggets and a Coke?

Ninety percent of Americans celebrate Christmas, according to the Pew Research Center; that’s far more than the 66% who identify as Christian. And according to a 2018 survey, by the Centers for Disease Control, 37% of Americans — 85 million people — eat fast food on any given day.

It’s clear how prevalent these traditions are in America. So what do they look like when combined?

A fast food restaurant decked out for Christmas is a common sight in Marion County, as staff mix up their 9-to-5s by way of fairy lights and tinsel.

“We feel happier this time of year,” Sonic employee Justin Miller said. “The Christmas decorations help with us being here.”

Decor helps customers feel as if it’s a special time of year, and corporate overlords look favorably on it.

Take Hillsboro’s Pizza Hut, which has been decked out in recent weeks with ornaments and a Christmas tree made from cardboard “Triple Treat” boxes. (“Triple Treats,” despite the Halloween-y homophone, are described by Pizza Hut as “three courses in one festive box.”)

Nikki VanWart came to the counter donning a Santa hat, as she does each year. This year, she received from her boxx one inscribed with the Pizza Hut logo

She has hung ornaments each of the 13 years she has worked at the store.

“They’re timeless,” she said.

Decorating the store, VanWart said, is a highlight for employees.

“We like to be festive,” she said. “We do it by choice for the Christmas spirit of it all.”

The decor keeps restaurant-goers in good spirits.

“I think the community likes it,” she said. “You’ve gotta get that Christmas music going. You’ve gotta get people in the holiday spirit. Then there are happy customers, and everyone’s having a good time.”

The two Subways in the county — one in Marion, one in Hillsboro — possess sparser decorations.

Marion’s favorite chain sandwich shop has a tinsel tree by the cash register. An elf-on-the-shelf sat unsettlingly atop the ceiling fan for a few weeks but has since been excommunicated.

“The lady that brought them took them back,” employee Courtney Wyss said.

Hillsboro’s Subway has not put up decorations as of this past week, though employee Paige Craney said employees still planned to do so.

“As long as it’s within parameters, and it’s tasteful, we can do some things,” she said. “I know we have to have our attire on.”

Craney said she did not consider fast food a tradition in the same way as Christmas.

“My family, at least, tried to eat healthy, really home-grown stuff, because we lived on a farm,” she said. “If we were really busy, fast food was something that was easier for us. But we definitely didn’t make it a tradition.”

It is a fair point; fast food, for many, is a liminal meal, eaten only in lieu of something better, fresher, and more meaningful. It saves time and costs little, a kind of bridge between memories.

Still, fast food and Christmastime have a noteworthy overlap.

“I see a lot of companies going all-out for Christmas, and across holiday traveling, everyone’s always got their favorite fast food place that they stop by,” she said. “Like, ‘oh, this town has the best McDonalds, or the best Braums.’ Things like that.”

The fourth and final fast-food restaurant in the county is Sonic in Hillsboro, a place so transitory, in fact, that there is no interior. It is drive-thru only, lest you take time to sit and think about your meal.

A billboard looming over US-56 extols religion and privatization in the same breath: “Things you need: prayers, Jesus, Sonic.”

Sonic employees have been decorating for the holidays for at least four years, Justin Miller said.

“We like Christmas a lot here,” he said. “For other holidays, most of the time we’ll just do a window painting. But for Christmas, we actually put up decorations.”

The restaurant has made the most of its small kitchen space, adding a Santa hat to a cardboard cutout of Murr from the TV show “Impractical Jokers” (an inside joke).

Another employee, Sarah Spurlin, has painted a large Christmas tree onto the glass kitchen door. Employees plan to add more decor for Christmas Day itself.

Like other fast-food restaurants in the county, Sonic does not ask employees to decorate. It’s entirely a passion project, which feels fitting for the holiday season.

“They don’t look at them,” Miller said, “but they also don’t say no.”