BERKELEY – “Over the river and through the woods” might be the way to Grandma’s house, but there’s another place to go this holiday season.
If you head down Grant Concourse, off of Route 9, the road falls away into darkness as the few street lights are left behind. The road turns a few times. The first light you’ll see is through the bare winter trees. It’s the first hint that you’re about to see something magnificent.
As you pull up, there’s a trail of lights leading to the house, lit up in all its glory. The house is wallpapered with lights, blinking in time with songs playing on speakers or on the radio if you tune in to the station listed on a sign. A menagerie of colorful characters greet you on the lawn. As “Let It Snow” plays, a snow maker dusts the front of the yard.
Tom Makowski said he used to decorate like this at his old house on Woodhaven Avenue near Central Regional. They moved here a few years ago and are starting up the tradition again.
“I think a lot of people think we stopped,” he said.
You could Google “best Christmas houses in New Jersey” and they’d be on the first page of results. They had won Jersey Central Power & Light’s Christmas light contest several times. And it’s fitting that a power company is hosting a contest for lights. After all, there are more than 200,000 bulbs and 300 extension cords.
The electric bill goes up a couple hundred dollars during the month. They have a donation box to help out. In past years, they used to do a food drive for St. Barnabas. It was a lot more busy then, with a quarter mile line down the street on the weekend before Christmas. This year, living in a quiet area, they haven’t really got much traffic.
In order to have the lights go on in sync with the music, a great deal of programming has to happen, Mankowski said. Each string of lights have to be timed with the rhythm. There’s a lot more tech going on behind the scenes than a casual observer might realize.
Decorating started on November 4 and “I’ve been outside almost every day.”
The decision to decorate again was not taken lightly. He asked his daughters whether they should. The answer: “Definitely. Of all the years to do it, this is the one.”
