Faces light up at US Christmas displays

By Katharina Sonnichsen and Barbara Munker Dec 23, 2011, 19:21 GMT

San Francisco/New York - When twilight falls in the United States during the Christmas season, light shows start to dazzle in the front yards of many homes.

Home owners vie to have the most spectacular display, and some of the shows - with their twinkling strands of lights, illuminated plastic Santas and sundry blinking figures - attract thousands of visitors every year.

One such display is the creation of Lucy Spata, who has decorated her yard for more than 30 years.

Located in the Dyker Heights section of Brooklyn, one of New York City's five boroughs, it is a wonderland of human-sized angels and nutcrackers, glittering stars and bright neon signs.

Strangers come and take pictures. Some of her neighbours complained at first, but Spata was undeterred, and many followed her lead.

For several years now, Dyker Heights has been known as 'Dyker Lights' during the Christmas season.

The many head-turning displays of lights in the neighbourhood have made it a winter sightseeing destination for about 100,000 people annually. Businessman Tony Muia even organizes bus tours through the residential area.

'The Christmas tree in front of Rockefeller Center (in the New York City borough of Manhattan) is nothing compared with the Christmas lights in Brooklyn,' said Muia, a native Brooklynite.

On the other side of the country, in sunny California, the light shows have also begun. For Kathy Rombiero, a 42-year-old sales manager, the Christmas season starts in August.

That is when she gradually begins to transform the yard and rooms of her single-family home in Novato, north of San Francisco, into a centre of glorious glitz.

There are plastic snowmen on the roof, mangers in the garden, an artificial snow-covered railway with Santa Clauses, 150,000 lights and untold numbers of other holiday figures.

'It's as if you've stepped into heaven!' Rombiero told dpa.

This is her 20th heavenly year. From early December into January, every evening is busy for the Rombieros, whose extravagant display was seen by about 35,000 visitors last year.

'Sometimes people have to wait in line in front of the house for more than 45 minutes,' Rombiero said proudly.

She subjects herself to the stress, she said, because 'my biggest Christmas gift is seeing the children and, even more, the adults beaming like 10-year-olds.' For this, she is more than happy to pay a hell of a bill for electricity in December.

Rombiero's display is listed as 'must-see' on the website CaliforniaChristmasLights.com by Alex Dourov, a web designer and father-of-two. This year, Dourov presents photographs of 475 private homes in northern California with spectacular Christmas lighting, along with directions to them.

'My family thinks I'm a bit crazy, but for me, it's simply fun to bring people this Christmas feeling,' said Dourov, who knows all about the topic. 'A house in Hillside has 350,000 little lights on,' he remarked, then added a warning: 'There are always long traffic jams.'

The economic crisis seems to have hardly put a damper on the annual ostentation. 'More and more people like extreme decorations and go completely berserk with the lights,' Dourov remarked.

He said he had switched the light strands at his house in Livermore to energy-efficient LEDs two years ago. Since then, his electricity bill at Christmas is 'only' 300 dollars higher than at other times of the year.

Spata's electricity bill, and those of her fellow illuminati in Brooklyn, are closely guarded secrets. The 'Dyker Lights' league does not speak of costs.

Tour operator Muia, for his part, unabashedly cashes in on the Christmas lighting. Every day, several of his buses roll through the area. The tourists can lean back and enjoy the highlights without having to sit behind the wheel of a car and look out for other rubberneckers.

'Residents complain about the traffic, but if it weren't for us, there'd be countless rear-end collisions each year,' Muia said.

Another eye-catcher that draws crowds every evening in Brooklyn is the Polizzottos' house. At the door stands an outsized Santa Claus, next to which visitors can have their photograph taken for a fee.

The money goes to the US-based Make-A-Wish Foundation International, whose declared mission is to grant the wishes of children with life-threatening medical conditions, 'to enrich the human experience with hope, strength and joy.'

'Dyker Lights' visitors, be they young or old, have their Christmas experience enriched - with lights, lights and more lights.