It’s the Christmas lights display everybody is talking about.
Every year, the Facettes, who live on Albert St. W., go all out with their Christmas decorations, lighting up their whole neighbourhood.
“Christmas has always been a really special time for us,” says Shannon Facette, while showing off the decorations to ThoroldToday. “It’s just a time where we can be with all of our family and celebrate all the things that we’re grateful for. We just enjoy that other people enjoy it too.”
The Facettes have been living in their house on Albert St. W. for ten years. When they first moved in, their Christmas decorations were fairly modest.
“At first we just did regular lights with a couple inflatables,” Facette says. “Every year after Christmas my husband [George] would buy things on sale and every year things would just get bigger and bigger.”
George starts the preparations for the Christmas lights display as early as October.
“He hand makes everything himself,” says Facette. “The wreaths and the ornaments, he uses PVC piping and other shop materials and just wraps lights around them and glues them all together and comes up with all this in his head.”
Slowly but surely throughout the fall the display comes together.
“He spends his time in the garage, putting things together, building things and then November 1, as soon as Halloween is over, he will start doing things outside,” says Facette. “He starts at the top and works his way down. We have been fairly lucky with the weather. We got the roof done before all that snow.”
Putting up the decorations outside takes about two to three weeks.
“He can only do it when he’s not working,” Facette says. “He always wants to be done before the [Santa Claus] Parade. We do a big reveal before the parade with our family and we do a whole countdown and stuff. Then we start lighting it for the parade.”
The Christmas lights are accompanied by music, offering a real show for the whole neighbourhood. Every night the display is timed to turn on at 5 o’clock and turn off again at a quarter to 11.
Facette says that the response from neighbours has been overwhelmingly positive.
“Our one neighbour has stuff on her lawn,” she says. “It’s my husband’s doing. He spilled over into her lawn and she loves it. Our other neighbours have said: ‘I wish you could run an extension cord across the street and do our houses too.’ They just love it.”
One might think that a display like the Facettes must cost a lot of electricity.
“Everybody asks me that,” says Facette. “It’s not that bad. In summertime, the air conditioner draws so much hydro that you don’t really notice in the winter when it’s all LED lighting what we use so we haven’t really noticed it.”
Because their house draws so much attention, Facette has started using the opportunity to collect essentials for Community Care.
At the end of the day, the Facettes just want to spread some holiday cheer to passerby.
“People drive by, take a picture and post it: ‘Oh my God, you guys, this house makes me so happy,’” she says. “We’re like: ‘That’s great.’ That makes us happy and that’s why we do it.”
To check out the Christmas lights head over to Albert St. W. Between 5 p.m. and 10:45 p.m.
To see what the Christmas lights display looks like in action: