Creatures great and small, wild and mild, enliven a wealth of imaginative wreaths in the 33rd annual City and County of Honolulu Holiday Wreath Contest, on display in the Lane Gallery at Honolulu Hale until Jan. 1.

This year’s contest theme, “Kalikimaka Kritters,” was energetically adopted by 32 theme and 15 youth category submissions out of 73 entrants in all; judges were Ann Asakura, Leighton Liu and Tim Slaughter from the Commission on Culture and the Arts.

Abigail Uyesato, a Honolulu home-schooled first-grader, made up “Anuenue Moa,” a chicken with rainbow feathers, “Because I like rainbows because they’re colorful,” she said. “Our entire carpet was full of feathers,” said her mother, Shyla Uyesato.

Other youth category highlights included recycled cardboard/newsprint silhouettes of such local creatures as a wild boar, Oahu tree snail, Hawaiian monk seal, owl, hawk and nene goose in “Kalikimaka Kritters” by the preschoolers of Seagull School at Ko Olina Classroom 3, which won first place. Included were photos of the children dressed as junior forest rangers, as they are learning how rangers care for wildlife at Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park, said teacher Christel Miranda.

Hand-painted and decorated hollow eggs and gourds became birds, dinosaurs, sharks and whales on “The Many Kritters of Maui” by Classroom 4 students at Seagull School at Ocean Pointe in Ewa Beach, which took third place. Beach cleanups provided materials for two mosaics that won Judges’ Choice awards: the sea creatures in “Malama O Ke Kai” by Girl Scouts of Hawaii Troop 967 and “2 hours of picking up plastic pieces by hand, Waimanalo Bay” by Adam D. and Angel D.

Repurposed materials also shone in the adult category. “Yukie (Eternal Happiness)” was constructed of piano parts — dampers, hammers, keys — by Marshall K. Fergerstrom of Honolulu and won the Mayor’s Holly Award for best in show.

“It was an upright piano, given to our son by a close friend to learn how to play,” Fergerstrom said, but over the decades, strings rusted and broke until the piano could not be repaired. “So we were in the process of taking it apart to remove it, and the felt padding, it dawned on me, was evergreen and red — the colors of Christmas!”

Named for the newest addition to their family, a baby “full of joy and happiness,” the harmonious assemblage makes glorious, silent music on the wall.

The adult category winner, “Rockin’ Around the Tennis Court” by the U.S. Tennis Association, Hawaii Pacific, features a vintage wooden racket and pineapples made of tennis balls. The nine-member staff brainstormed on conveying the health benefits of tennis, said marketing director Christine Nip. “We added pineapples for Hawaii and because they’re good for you, too,” Nip said. “It was a fun team project.”

Indeed, the show rocks with the holiday spirit that brings people together to make things bright. From the gilded hairdressing tools in “Hairs to the Holidays” by Jason Victorino of Salon 808, to the toothy, hairy creatures in Marian Bernal’s “Monsters in the Monstera” and clambering crustaceans on Json N’s first-place theme category winner, “Too many crabs!” — these expressions wreath viewers’ faces in smiles.

The exhibit is free and open to the public in the Lane Gallery of Honolulu Hale from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. daily until Jan. 1.