(Updated 9:30 a.m., Dec. 24)
Handful of east end residents take outdoor light displays to the next level
By Fred Sherwin
Orléans Online

For Cholette Crescent resident Don Giroux decorating his house every year has become a holiday tradition. Fred Sherwin/Photo

But while most people are happy hanging a few strings of lights and one or two inflatable bonhommes every year, there are those who take the tradition to an entirely different level.

Don Giroux started getting into the house decorating spirit when he was still a teenager.

"My father was like everybody else. He used to hang a few strings of lights on the front garage. Then when I took over from him I did the rest of the house and the fence," recalls Giroux whose two-storey home on Cholette Cres. in Convent Glen South has become a must-see attraction for local Christmas decoration enthusiasts.

When he first bought the house in 1982 it was a bungalow, which made decorating it fairly easy, but through the passage of time he kept adding more and more lights and eventually he renovated the place and added a second floor which meant he could add even more decorations.

Today, he has over 120 strings of lights containing 12,000 twinkling bulbs, a half dozen inflatables and other assorted cutouts.

"We started setting everything up in early November to take advantage of the nice weather," says Giroux who does most of the work with his wife despite having three older children between the ages of 17 and 26./

"When I start pulling out the decorations they run in the other direction," laughs Giroux. "The funny thing is, once it's all set up and working they bring all their friends over to show it off."

Giroux switched over to LED lights last year which reduced his hydro bill for the month of December by 30 per cent. It's still around $500, but that's a small price to pay for the all the joy it brings Giroux and his family, not to mention the hundreds of sightseers who drive by every year.

Belcourt Boulevard resident Gilles Leger got caught up in the Christmas decoration craze when he bought his first house in Cumberland Village. He started out like most people by hanging a few strings of lights from his eavestrough. As the years passed by he added more and more lights along with several homemade cutouts.

In the 1990s he moved to Princess Louise Drive in Fallingbrook, where his display grew even larger and started attracting people from across the east end. Then in 2000 he moved to his current residence on Belcourt Blvd., just south of St. Joseph Blvd.

Gilles Leger's Belcourt Boulevard residence is a 'must see' attraction for area Chirstmas decoration enthusiasts. Fred Sherwin/Photo

"I remember the first year my neighbour across the street asked me if I was going to hang any lights and I said, 'Oh yeah, a few.' On the Saturday, I started at six o'clock in the morning and worked to six o'clock at night. The next day I started at six o'clock in the morning again and around noon I saw him come out of his house with his wife and get in the car to go out and I said to my wife, 'You wait and see, he's going to buy more lights.' And sure enough he came back with all these shopping bags filled with lights and decorations. I just had to laugh," says Leger.

Today, the neighbour's house, which sits across the street from the Legers, is an attraction in its own right, as is the house beside it.

Decorating your house for the Christmas season can be contagious, just ask anyone living on Taffy Lane. The most famous street in Orléans, attracts thousands of visitors every year and for good reason, almost every house on the street is decorated to the max.

On a street where most of the homeowners go out of their way to provide a good show for the people driving by, Peter Abercrombie has taken the art of Christmas decorating to an entirely different level.

Among the hundreds of items that are on display in his front yard are two Nutcracker soldiers measuring exactly six feet tall (as stipulated in “Babes in Toyland”), a giant wood cutout of Frosty the Snowman, a large cutout of the Grinch, a flying squirrel inspired by National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, assorted Disney characters and over 12,000 lights all programmed through his computer.

Abercrombie first started decorating his house after returning from a French language course in Quebec in 1984. As part of the training program, the students had to work on various projects together. Their first assignment was to decorate a house for Hallowe’en. The group ended up doing such a great job they decided to do the same at Christmas. When the course ended Abercrombie took some of the decorations home and used them on his house.

A lot has changed in Christmas lighting in the past four decades. Today, there are a lot more varieties of lights and decorations have gotten much more complex. Ten years ago icicle lights were all the rage. Then came string lighting, curtain lights and lights in the shape of bows and stars. Inflatable figures are now all the rage as are energy efficient LED lights which are a huge improvement over the old seven watt bulbs.

Folks like Leger and Abercrombie spend hours upon hours setting up their displays every winter. By his own count, Leger spent 42 hours setting up his display this year, which includes 18,200 lights, and he didn't even come close to using all his decorations.

"Oh yeah, you should see my garage. I only used a quarter of what I have," says Leger without a hint of exaggeration. "I still have 25 inflatables that I didn't get a chance to use."

One thing he did add this year was a series of hand-painted plywood cutouts depicting an entire gingerbread village. It took Leger nearly four months to cut and paint all the figures and he's already working on an eight-foot Santa that will have motorized arms and legs.

Asked why he goes through the time and expense every year, Leger barely skips a beat.

"I just love it. The comments I get, you just wouldn't believe. A couple of years ago the door bell rang at about 10 o'clock at night and it was a woman bringing me a gift. She wanted to thank me for taking the time to decorate the house and said that it reminded her of growing up in Nova Scotia. I hear that type of thing all the time," says Leger.

That pretty much sums up the motivation of all the Christmas light-o-logists in the east end. So if you get the chance, pile the kids in the car, stop by Tim Horton's for some hot chocolate and take a tour of the amazing Christmas light displays that can be seen right in our own backyard.

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