Thousands of dollars, lights & a lift: Sacramento residents embrace extreme holiday displays

A small group of Folsom neighbors spend thousands of dollars annually on holiday decorations and setup and even rent a 50-foot lift to string lights on redwood trees for the joy of attracting onlookers.

Kaitlin Dolin and Evani Paul, high school seniors who live elsewhere in Folsom, had been out Monday when they spied the Darvel Court’s lights, which are on a hill and can be seen from some distance away. Neighbors from two houses at 1730 and 1731 Darvel Court and an adjacent corner house technically at 360 Listowe Drive have been working together for 23 years on holiday decorations. The lights are such an institution they have their own Yelp page.

“We were just scouting to look at some Christmas lights… getting the holiday spirit,” Dolin said. “I think this takes the cake.”

Every year around this time, people in the Sacramento region begin to dig out their holiday lights. For many, if not most people, decorations will be modest – perhaps lights strung along rooflines or around a front yard tree or shrubbery, maybe an inflatable figure or two. It’s time-intensive to do even a modest holiday display and with time precious and life demanding, many people don’t have the need to go beyond.

But, as the Sacramento Bee learned by visiting more than 40 holiday light displays around the region this week, there is another group of people. This small but noteworthy group spares neither time nor expense to create ostentatious displays. It’s a lot of sometimes thankless work. But it can also resonate with people.

Planning for the holidays

Leticia Busco was standing across the street from Laurie Weiss’s Christmas display at 3316 Lake Terrace Dr. in Elk Grove on Sunday when Busco recounted that she and Weiss, who didn’t respond to a request for comment, had worked together as vice principals.

“We were in a meeting and she said, ‘I can’t do that this weekend because I’m working on Christmas lights,’” Busco said. “And it was in September.”

Looking at Weiss’ display, which has blindingly flashing lights, music that can be heard nearby on 104.7 FM and was blasting the anthem “Let it Go” from the 2013 film “Frozen,” while Busco spoke, it’s not hard to see why this takes some time to arrange.

The average person might have a long Saturday or Sunday during the weekend that follows Thanksgiving when they dig out Christmas lights from their garage and toil away for a day or two before getting a display they can either be proud of or at least make their peace with before moving on to other things. That is not the experience, though, for people who take holiday decorations to the extreme.

Take David Groza, who lives on Mainstay Court in Elk Grove and has so many decorations they stretch onto a neighbor’s lawn. Like Weiss, Groza’s display includes music that can be heard elsewhere, with Groza using an FM modulator to broadcast within a one-mile radius on 107.9 FM. He started working on his decorations for this year on Oct. 1.

Groza’s display features roughly 30 modules that operate independently, a laptop command post in his garage and a large number of electrical panels in his backyard, with Groza saying he has some background in electrical engineering.

Some people do elaborate Christmas displays to profess or honor their faith, such as Jerome Adams at 8072 Huxley Court in Sacramento. That’s a motivator as well for Laura Thomas, 63, who was on her roof as late as 2 a.m. this year to create her display at 2224 Meadowbrook Road in Sacramento. Thomas also wants to honor her mother, who died of cancer when Thomas was 21.

Others like Groza do what they do with their holiday displays because of passion and a desire to tackle new challenges.

“Passion is just something I’ve always liked to do,” Groza said. “It’s like you always want to do something better and different. I think this is different.”

For Matt Hill of 248 W. Elm Ave. in Galt, doing something different meant shifting away from inflatable lawn figures, which used to blanket his property during the holidays to just a handful of favorites. Hill has used 3-D printing to create arches and has programmed proprietary controllers to run a light and sound show every evening.

“I just decided to get into this hobby,” Hill said. “Try something a little more challenging, more coding.”

It also meant that he started planning for this year’s holiday display in January, though the tradeoff was that the bulk of the installation only took about two days.

The costs of the hobby

Going all out on creating a one of a kind holiday display isn’t cheap. Asked how much his holiday display has increased his power bill, Groza said that when he checked in the past, it was around $500 extra each month though his use of solar energy has reduced costs.

Brian Escamilla, who lives at 1730 Darvel Court in Folsom estimated that his household spends $3,000 to $4,000 annually on decorations. And that’s just his share for decorations in his collaboration with the Curtises at 1731 Darvel Court and the Gomezes at 1730 Darvel Court.

Inclement weather can severely affect the tens of thousands of lights strung around the court, with Escamilla estimating that he and his neighbors spend $2,000 to $3,000 annually just on lights. There’s also the $300 daily cost to rent a 50-foot lift that Escamilla rides up in and still has to use a 20-foot pole at the top to string lights over approximately 70-foot redwood trees.

“There’s a lot of sway, so you come down with sea legs, because you’re moving up there the whole time,” Escamilla said. He noted that the secret to not getting scared in the lift is to look straight at the trees and not look down.

Still, all the work leads to quite a December on Darvel Court. People come from other towns to see the lights. Escamilla and his neighbors pass out candy canes, going through more than 2,000 of them last year.

“We have our neighbors coming by, even during the summer, July, they’ll come by and thank us for what we do in the court,” Escamilla said.

Deana Curtis, who lives at 1731 Darvel Court, said she heard from someone just the other day that “it just brightens their day to know that people still do things just out of the kindness of their heart.”

‘A really good feeling’

Tony Levy had to resign from work in 2013 when his vision started to go due to a rare form of macular degeneration. That’s when he started doing Christmas lights.

Lights stretch around his corner property at 8985 Twin Falls Dr. in Sacramento, blanketing nearly every available space. Levy, who is now legally blind, installs lights without help, saying he’s the only person who touches them at that point. With some peripheral vision left, he is able to see negative space with dark spots, which is where he puts lights.

In the early years after he stopped working, Levy could still walk around his neighborhood and see lights, until he realized about five years ago that he could no longer see them. It’s why his inspiration for doing holiday lights has shifted over the years.

“Initially, the motivation was to kind of make me feel good about my vision, so I could see something that was really like visually spectacular,” Levy said. “And then when I wasn’t able to really appreciate the lights anymore, it turned to appreciating the way the community enjoyed the lights.”

Community is a powerful motivator for many who spend hours stringing lights. Almost adjacent to the Sacramento River at 6558 Benham Way in Greenhaven/Pocket, Allen Valla works with family and a good friend to string 10,000 lights over a 72-foot redwood tree in front of his house.

“People like it so much, they comment so much,” Valla said. “That’s the biggest reason it goes up.”

On Dovewood Court in Orangevale, 17 households are collaborating this year on a light display, according to Denise Transtrum, who is one of the residents. Transtrum said the tradition on the court has been going on for 41 years. Sometimes, people who come by will say that their parents once brought them and now, they’re bringing their own kids.

“It’s just the joy that it brings other people,” Transtrum said.

Asked about the cost of the large number of plug-in inflatable figures on display outside her home at 7296 Riverwind Way in Sacramento, Kim Myers hesitated for a moment before allowing that it was $700. Still, she can reconcile this with the sense of community she gets from her decorating.

“Not to toot my own horn, but people love it,” Myers said. “People come by and tell me that they’ve been waiting for it, and they just can’t wait to see what I have new. And people bring their kids and they’re so excited. And it’s just a really good feeling to have that sense of wonder and joy that you share with the people around you for the Christmas season.”

This story was originally published December 5, 2024 at 5:00 AM.