Victor de Groot takes his job of spreading Christmas cheer seriously. So seriously, in fact, the first words out of his mouth after returning from a trip to Holland Aug. 8 was ‘it’s time for Christmas lights,’ his mother Hanneka recalled.
Minutes after the sun set Dec. 5, the 14-year-old student at the Dr. TJ Owens Gilroy Early College Academy eagerly powered on his latest creation, one that he’d been imagining well before summer break. In May, de Groot was already at the drawing board, mapping out how he’d weave together roughly 12,000 Christmas lights for a display at his family’s home on the 2500 block of Meadow Lark Lane.
The GECA freshman programmed a 35-minute show of lights matched to music, set up thousands of individual lights, and this year, constructed a device that allows people to pull up to the home in their cars, tune their radio to 104.7 and listen in to the show—all without needing to have speakers on the lawn playing the same Christmas tunes all night.
Standing on his front lawn minutes after first powering on the display, which will run nightly through Jan. 3, Victor admires the result of months of hard work, preparation and tweaking.
“I have this image in my head but when I turn it on it looks really nice,” Victor says with a laugh. “When I saw all these synchronized lights displays on the Internet—that’s where I learned how to do it—I thought ‘wouldn’t it be cool to see it on our house?’”
“When the lights are on, his heart opens up. They really do make him happy,” Victor’s mother Hanneka said.
While Hanneka said she can’t exactly pinpoint where her middle son’s fascination with lights came from, she first realized Victor caught the Christmas light bug after he came back from a visit to Gilroy Gardens during the holiday season with a friend.
“He literally said ‘mom, that was the happiest day of my life,’” Hanneka recalled. “I could almost see the twinkle in his eyes.”
Growing up, the de Groots always had a Christmas tree and some sort of lights. But Victor took his family’s display of holiday cheer to the next level, and continues to up himself every year. This year, he added approximately 2,000 lights to the display he handcrafted.
Even from an early age, Victor wanted to set Christmas lights up. He helped his father, an engineer by trade, with small tasks until he relinquished the reins altogether and let Victor create the display.
“If I saw extra lights sitting around, I always wanted to set them up because why keep them around if they’re not up?” Victor said with a chuckle.
Since they’re from the Netherlands originally and they have no family in this country—let alone in Gilroy—Hanneka said Victor’s interest in lights might have started as a way to brighten the family’s own spirits.
“Around Christmas, you really realize that it’s only the five of us,” Hanneka said. “There are no presents under the tree from grandparents, aunts and uncles. That’s why, I think, we did more—to cover up not having family in the country.”
But it’s deeper than that for Victor. Seeing a car’s headlights out in front of his house from his living room—and realizing they’re there to admire the lights—fills him with a sense of joy, a joy he hopes spreads quicker as more people check out the display.
“I really like seeing cars, instead of going straight, turn into our driveway and stay a bit before they leave,” he said. “I saw that last year and the year before and that really made me happy that people enjoy this kind of stuff.”
“Sometimes I want to run out and say ‘hi’ when I see a car parked outside,” Victor continued. “A lot of people say it’s nice to see something like this because they’ll be driving down New Avenue and see these flashing lights and think ‘what the heck is that’ because ours is just a small dead-end street. They’re curious and they come over here. I never really get to hear it from them—random strangers—but family friends, if they come over, will say it’s really nice.”
The de Groot home is located on the 2500 block of Meadow Lark Lane in unincorporated Gilroy. The lights will be on nightly through Jan.3.
