Fayetteville father and son duo put on annual Christmas display for fourth year in a row – The Fayetteville Observer

Akira Kyles|The Fayetteville Observer

Nine-year-old John Palmer Kells fell in love with inflatables after he was given one when he was 4 years old. After growing his collection of inflatables, he and his dad put on their fourth display for the holiday season.

John Palmer hasa collection of between 70 to 80 inflatables that are included in his displays with his dad, John Kells,at their home in Fayetteville.

John, an engineer, has encouraged his passion of inflatables, and they started putting up the family's Christmas displays together. John said that John Palmer, now 9, usually gets more inflatables added to his collection for Christmas and his birthday.

According to John Kells, they got the inspiration for their display from a show they would see that was synchronized to a radio station. They would drive over and sit there for an hour and watch the show every night.

"I started saying 'I want to do it,'" John Palmer said.

After a couple of years, John said they got the system and software so they could start making displays themselves.

"There's this company called Light-O-Rama, they produce a software that you load into your computer and it sends a signal to a control box out in the yard that has 16 different plugs, and the software tells those plugs when to turn on and off," said John. "You connect your lights to those plugs and that's how it synchronizes, and John Palmer's real interest in it has always been the electrical wiring part of it."

John Palmer said finding places and putting the inflatablesand wires in, arranging the display and planning it are his favorite parts of the process.John Palmer has different scenes that he also likes to set up.

"He's got a Snoopy scene and he's got penguins and different scenes," John said. "He likes to arrange those scenes of inflatables and get them looking good."

Of all the inflatables, John Palmer said his Snoopy is his favorite.

In addition to Christmas, John Palmer also does a Halloween display each year.

John mainly helps John Palmer by hoisting things and rigging up apulley system to suspend some airplanes and helicopters from trees.

John Palmer has some friends who come by to see his display when it's complete and get a better sense of how into it he is.

"They knew I was obsessed with it and stuff, but they didn't know how many of them I had," said John Palmer.

John said they expanded this year's display.

"We just think that this is the right year to expand it a little to givesome peoplesomething to look forward to," said John.

John's wife, Lacy Kells, said they get a lot of positive feedback about the displayfrom the communityon Facebook

"Everybody has been particularly excited about this year. Most people say 'please tell John Palmer thank you. It's really brought us so much joy driving by every day, especially this yearwhen things have been so hard,'" Lacy said."Surprisingly, we even get a lot of adults driving by, just grownups, and they're just in their cars grinning from ear to earbut particularly, I think we hear squeals from childrenfrom the backseat of cars just about every night as they drive bythe display. That's really, I think, one of the best compliments we get is just hearing the childrenyelling in the backseat."

More: Here are 5 places to see Christmas lights in the Fayetteville area

As interested as John Palmer is in his holiday displays and wiring, his parents said they could see him going into electrical engineering or some sort of design in the future.

"He likes to tinker with things, so he likes to deconstruct and figure out how things work," said John."I think that's part of what he likes about it, he spends a lot of time with his grandfather, me also, but I'm working a lotduring the day. His grandfather and he, they repair a lot of these inflatables and I think that he really enjoys that aspect of it."

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Staff writerAkira Kyles can be reachedatakyles@gannett.com.

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Fayetteville father and son duo put on annual Christmas display for fourth year in a row - The Fayetteville Observer