Two Gilroy men placed their hearts on their lawns. They do it
every year-not literally, of course, but with over-the-top holiday
displays that demonstrate their love for this time of year.
Two Gilroy men placed their hearts on their lawns. They do it every year-not literally, of course, but with over-the-top holiday displays that demonstrate their love for this time of year.
The Cripps family display on Babbs Creek Drive is so bright it can be seen from across the creek on Oak Brook Way. Electric trees cycle through gradations of blue, while reindeer, penguins, polar bears and the whole gamut of winter-related figures sparkle and flash. It’s almost a little bit of Las Vegas glitz on a small residential street.
My young daughter always asks me to drive past this house to admire the lights (she earnestly calls the street “Babbs Crack”), and the other night I happened to catch owner Richard Cripps out checking on the decorations. He told me, “We do it for the kids.”
Such an extensive light display doesn’t come cheaply. In past years, when the display was lit nightly, he paid $175 extra in December. This year, he estimates it will be only $40 since he’s cutting back and only running the lights on weekends. “It saddens us that we can’t run it all the time like we could before,” he said. But his family has to curtail the expense because he’s been out of work since March of 2009. He was laid off from a company where he had worked for 27 years.
“We are so glad to bring a little joy into the local children’s hearts. We don’t do this as a competition or to bolster our egos. We do it for the sheer joy of lighting up a child’s eyes and bringing a little wonder to their hearts. We have very little left right now with me being out of work for 20 months and my wife being disabled. Life may not be too fun for our family this year, but it helps to bring us together to give some others some joy and makes us thankful that at least we are together as a family in our home for at least one more holiday season,” he wrote in a later email.
He and his wife first started doing the display in 2003, when they moved to Gilroy. “Both my wife Lisa and I come from the east coast where holiday decorating is a big tradition, especially when you have a blanket of snow as a backdrop. We made this display for the neighborhood kids since we had no child of our own at the time. We adopted our child, Evelyn, in 2006 and then it was for her and the kids to enjoy,” he wrote.
Not far away, another yard makes visitors’ eyes pop. It’s a Gilroy legend, and has been written up many times. You know of what I speak? Yes, I refer to the Lexington Avenue “Twelve Days of Christmas” house. Here, owner Mike Osler has fashioned painted wooden cut-outs to represent the characters in the song.
The twist is, spotlights illuminate the cut-outs in an elaborately-rigged light display run by a computer set up in his garage. And the double-twist is, it’s all timed to Christmas music blasting from his speakers (or listenable if you tune to 89.5 FM). Cars line up to watch and hear the 14-minute spectacle.
He’s been doing the display for 11 years now. “Originally, I did it for my ex,” he said. “She split the year after I made the damn thing.”
Osler’s sense of humor guided the creation of the figures. Anyone who pays attention to the “Twelve Days of Christmas” lyrics will grin at his loose interpretation. For instance, the nine geese a-laying aren’t working on pushing out eggs; they’re literally laying (well, lying is the proper verb tense here, but who wants to be a grammarian?), taking a bit of a rest on wooden planks.
The four calling birds use a phone. The three French hens dance the can-can in front of the Eiffel Tower (It makes Osler laugh to hear people refer to them as chickens. “I can’t put it much more obvious,” he said.) And the partridge in a pear tree bears trademarkable resemblance to the image used for the long-ago TV show The Partridge Family.
Because the light show works off a single plug in Osler’s garage and involves only one light working at a time, it’s actually very economical to run. It only costs $30 a month.
What he saves in electricity, he donates in man hours. Every year he has to repaint the figures, since the white tends to yellow. It takes him a full day just to put up the deer and get Santa on the roof, then another half-day to wire them up. He works for two weeks to mount the entire display.
Bad news: this might be his last year doing it. Why? Well, here’s the common denominator he shares with Richard Cripps. After 21 years at his job, he’s been out of work for two years. He may have to rent out his house and move in with his mother in San Jose, who he takes cares of anyway.
I spoke with Lisa Cripps just before sending the column in for deadline. She expressed great concern for her family’s welfare. They adopted Evelyn from Guatemala to give her a better life, and “now we stand to lose everything,” she said. “We’re just hanging on by our fingernails and praying someone will give Richard a job.” She is unable to work due to her disability, but she hopes her husband’s MBA and solid work history will move someone-maybe you, reader-to offer him a job.
Thanks to the Cripps and to Osler – and to all the other families who take the time to install icicles on your eaves and Santas on your rooftops, and to make sure everything is “glistening once again, with candy canes and sugar lanes aglow,” even when things aren’t all that secure at home.
