Holiday displays typically don't require 7.5 miles of electrical wire, 290,000 lights, 900 pounds of cords and 300 man-hours to set-up. But they do if it's Collingwood Lights, Virginia’s largest animated residential display located at 1601 Collingwood Road in Fort Hunt. I recently had the opportunity to speak with the mastermind behind the magic, Bill Vaughan, who's also the homeowner and the sole individual responsible for this elaborate display. Here's our interview:

How many years have you been doing this?

My son—this will be his 21^st birthday—and right after he was born I started. But it was normal then. (Vaughan is married and also has a 17-year-old daughter and three dogs and seven cats.)

When did it turn extraordinary?

It grew every year. About 13 years ago, maybe a little less than that. A volunteer from the nursing home across the street came over and thanked me and told me how much it meant to the residents, one in particular, who died right after Christmas. She (volunteer) had a tear in her eye. She was thanking me for making her (the resident’s) last few days special. Up until that point, I was just doing it for my family. I didn’t know how much it might mean to other people. After that, I was like, man, that’s when it just blew up.

I added more and more things. It started getting really big. And then 2004, I started animating; 2005, I started adding music. I wanted to make running, jumping deer.  I went online and I found a company that sold software where you could design, animate sequences and so forth.  They didn’t have the capability to do music at first.  So, I got that and about a year later, added music.  It’s a program where you put it on your computer, it’s a grid system. 

What made you start doing these displays?

It’s funny because every time my wife starts getting on me about my, this “obsession”, I say, “Remember who started this?” Because when we first started dating, I didn’t even put up Christmas lights. And she was visiting me. I lived in a little house then. I built this one later. She’s like, “You don’t have Christmas lights?” So, she got me started.

What do you do? What’s your background?

I’m a general contractor. When it comes to electronics, learning this was like the biggest challenge I have ever had. It was so stressful because you work on sequences, work on music all year long, putting different effects to it, and then at the very end, maybe a month before you start decorating, you can download it. And always, there’s a glitch. You run the songs, and they’ll start hanging up or they won’t download at all. And so in the first few years I was doing this, I would just freak out. But now I know all the bugs.  Now it’s basically just the physical effort that’s crazy. It’s crazy.

Once the display is set up, do you have to monitor it?

I usually create three shows. I created a show that I call, “Always”, and basically I push a button and it turns on. And it can run all of the time. Then if that works, then the second one I do is called, “Time”. I’ll set 5:00 (p.m.), it’s supposed to turn on, and the turn-off time is like 10:00 (p.m.). It runs a full loop. And If that goes, then I do, “Christmas Week”, which is later. It will start at 5:00 (p.m.), but it runs later.  And once you press “run”, it’s basically just connected to the computer. Once you download it, it goes into a microprocessor completely separate from the computer. And then it just does its thing. Hopefully.

Do you create different shows every year?

Because it’s such a tremendous amount of work, I’ve kept most of my same songs from year-to-year. I usually add one new one each year, and I’ll retire one. Because I’ve gotten to the point where I’ve got 13 songs on a 31-minute loop and that’s long enough. Every year I add elements so I have to go into every one of the songs, the last year’s routine, and amend each one of the songs to add whatever elements I have in the display. It takes me about eight to ten hours for a minute of music to do the sequencing.

Do you hire anybody to help you?

No, I have a helper when I am on the lift because I need somebody on the ground. But everything else I just do myself.

How much time do you devote to it? How long does it take you to put it all together?

July I’m taking everything out of the storage bins (located in Vaughan’s house—in the basement, garage and outside storage units). I’m going through it. The strings that aren’t working I fix or I chuck. The faded ones I chuck and replace with new strings. And then I put them all back in their containers, marking and organizing as I go. Then nothing happens till mid-September. Mid-September I start putting stuff up high that you can’t see. End of October, beginning of November, I’m full-time. I took off from work the month of November. And I worked from when it got light until it was too dark to see. This year was my longest year; it took almost 300 hours.

Why did it take longer?

It’s just I’m getting older. Everything is getting bigger. All of my trees I decorate are getting bigger so they take more lights. And I also hurt my foot three weeks ago, so I’ve been hobbling around, so I’m a little slower this year.  And I’m adding things. I added 22,000 lights this year and three new, big animated trees.

How long do you keep the display up?

Till the sixth of January, the 12^th Day of Christmas. (Daily, from December 1st till January 6th, from 5 to 10 p.m. each night. The display is turned off in heavy rain if it starts blowing breakers. Vaughan maintains a blog on his website and updates the status of the display if ever he has to turn it off.)

What does your electric bill look like?

Surprisingly, it’s going down now because I’m really investing in LEDs. Obviously, I can’t do it all at once because they’re expensive. What I do is buy them direct. We get a group buy, and we buy the containers from China. The worst it ever was my last year’s stack, and it was eight hundred and some dollars for the month of December. Obviously, it was basically, triple, easily, of what we normally see. But now it’s not that bad. It really doesn’t go up that much. But my carbon footprint is not growing, it’s actually decreasing.

Do you get any grief from the conservationists?

I’ve had a couple of people sign my guestbook or send me an email saying, “What the heck are you doing?” 

Do you ever blow any fuses?

No. Everything I have, all my circuits, I don’t load them more than 80 percent of their capacity. And I have amp meters to see what I’m doing as I’m doing it. ‘Cause that’s a heck of a danger. And how ironic would that be, my house burns down because of my Christmas lights?!?

How do your neighbors receive it? Do you have any complaints?

No, everybody, like my closest neighbors, love it. The people right there (points next door) have a 7-year-old daughter, and she thinks it’s great. And the neighbors on the corner right there, they love it. And I try and ask them every chance I can, “Hey, I’m not keeping you awake?, Is the music on too late? And they say, ‘No’.”  

But I did have one anonymous (visitor), he signed my guestbook, and it was a private message so he didn’t even let anyone else see it. I looked at it and it’s apparently a neighbor who just really laid into me about the safety issues, the traffic hazards, said someone’s going to be killed, blah, blah, blah. And, I’m like, “Oh my gosh, I wonder if this is a common sentiment?” So I posted on my guestbook and basically just copied and pasted his letter to me and said, “If there are others that feel this way, please let me know. I certainly will shut it down.” Because for me, this is a way for me to give back to the community, I certainly don’t want to be inconveniencing people. And everyone was like, “Oh no, no. Don’t listen to this guy, he’s crazy.”

After that I went to the police station, and I talked with them and they said, “Oh no, don’t worry. We monitor it periodically and if it looks like the traffic is too heavy or there’s a problem, we’ll send officers down to direct traffic.”   

Read part 2 of the Collingwood Lights interview. And visit 1601 Collingwood Road to check it out for yourself!