30,000+ Lights Highlight Whitehall Home's Holiday Display
WHITEHALL, PA — The effort usually begins the day after Halloween, when Steve Brodzinski leaves his home and begins lugging the lights and displays out of a nearby self-storage unit.
The effort takes weeks. But Brodzinski and his family – wife Mande and children Brooke, 7, and Theo, 4- believe it’s worth it.
What started as a relatively simple Christmas lights display in 2017 has grown into a monumental 30-minute synchronized exhibit, complete with a radio-transmitted soundtrack, that annually inspires carloads of people to navigate the dead-end difficulties of of Woody Crest Drive. Brodzinski says the event attracts more than 2,000 vehicles annually.
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He estimates he has spent more than $15,000 on displays and equipment since starting this neighborhood event.
Why absorb those costs? Why perform weeks of labor to put up such extensive evidence of holiday cheer?
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“I started doing it because I loved the lights and wanted something that would display the true meaning of Christmas and Christ,” Brodzinski, 40, who runs a company specializing in youth basketball instruction, told Patch. “It just kept growing.”
When Brodzinski began what now has become a holiday tradition, he had one computer box that controlled a half-dozen lighting displays. He now has 16 that can control 96 and are linked via Ethernet cables and memory cards. The displays use more than 30,000 LED lights.
Brodzinski also goes to great effort to synchronize the exhibit of blinking lights with a mix of modern and classic Christmas music. He uses an FM transmitter that enables people to hear the exhibit from the comfort of their vehicles merely by tuning to the 88.5 frequency.
The show runs every night from 5:15 p.m.-9:30 p.m. Sundays through Thursdays and 5:15 p.m.-10:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday. It’s free, although some spectators don’t believe it should be.
“We’ve had people who try to give us money, people who roll down their windows and ask if we accept donations,” Brodzinski said. “We tell them the purpose of this isn’t for them to give to us. The purpose is for us to give to them.”
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