Outdoor lighting spreads holiday cheer

When outdoor Christmas and holiday lighting displays switch on, some families enjoy taking drives to see what other decorators have thought of this year.

On Truckey Road, Tim Jones encourages sightseers to go one step further. They're welcome to park, step out and walk through a garland-lined pathway set up in his yard. Only up close is it possible to appreciate how much he's accumulated over 40 years of decorating his family's house and yard.

Jones said it all started when his mother-in-law gave his family some outdoor lights and a cross, saying they could either put them up or throw them out.

"We've always added something since then, some years we add more than others," he said.

This year, some inflatable fabric penguins play keep-away with a snowman's head, and the yard now has an animated sleigh that appears to take off, among other additions. The mischievous penguins stand among light-up reindeer near a team of eight hitched to a sleigh - with a red-nosed one on point. That sleigh is where Santa sits and welcomes visiting children on evenings Thursday through Sunday.

That's just one side of the trail. The rest is lined with many decorations and Christmas trees, some adorned with homemade additions. Near one corner is a full nativity scene near a church and two blow-molded choir members. One visitor told Jones about his favorite corner, where three trees are decorated with billiard, hunting and beer themes. There's so much to see that visitors will sometimes return during daylight.

"Even after this long, we still get people where it's their first time they've been out, or people who've been coming for six or seven years and they didn't know they can walk around and look," he said.

Across town, Rob Abram has a more subdued but still attention-grabbing light display. He's ambivalent about putting up lighting, but despite the frustrations that come with putting it, he enjoys being part of a neighborhood tradition. Every year on Christmas Eve residents along his street and the next one over will put out luminaries in their driveways to add to their electric lights.

"With the luminaries out, we get a lot of traffic on Christmas Eve coming through here," he said.

While Abram finds himself sympathizing with fictional dad Clark Griswold of National Lampoon fame, who plugged in his elaborate lighting display to find that none of it worked, he still finds enjoyment in the end result, he said. Abram recommended finding a good light string troubleshooting device, and uses one called the LightKeeper Pro to fix his incandescent-bulb strings.

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Outdoor lighting spreads holiday cheer