The Bright Side of the Holidays

The traffic piles up outside their homes.

The electric bills soar.

But year after year, homeowners across Ventura County continue to light up.

Thousands of tiny lights, clumps of reindeer, Santa’s sleigh, even a motorized ice rink pop up in frontyards and on rooftops.

Sometimes whole neighborhoods light up like a thousand Christmas trees, as they do on several blocks of graceful old homes along F Street in Oxnard.

Or it might be every house on a short street, such as the wonderland that homeowners on Aviano Drive in Camarillo have created. Or nearby Gemini Avenue, for that matter. The 14 neighbors on Gemini have shooting stars and motorized ice rinks.

“We all light up on the same night, then have a progressive dinner afterward,” said Paul Garrison, the self-proclaimed light king of the street.

“Paul goes to the store and buys new stuff every day,” said his wife, Peg Garrison.

“Yep. I held a contest and declared our house winner,” her husband said.

In Ventura, there is the twinkling magic of William Arguello’s modest little California bungalow, an egg-carton-and-aluminum-foil masterpiece, with candy canes fashioned from empty paper-towel spools.

“Some nights I have a traffic jam out front of people looking,” Arguello said, beaming over his West Simpson Street creation.

In Thousand Oaks, Dave and Donna Mortimer are the envy of their Wellesley Drive neighbors. They happen to own Mortimer’s Tree Service.

“So I have a big bucket truck that I can use to decorate the tops of our 30-foot trees,” Dave Mortimer said. “The neighbors want one.

“I’ve got maybe 12,000 lights outside. They’re programmed on a computer chip--they can flash, chase, fade and sparkle. I’ve even got my rose bushes and flower beds lit up.”

Like nearly all outdoor holiday decorators around Ventura County, Mortimer started small a few years ago, just because he liked to.

“I get a little bigger each year. This year I probably spent a couple hundred bucks, adding on lights. I’ve probably got 20 boxes of icicle lights put up. They’re the big thing this year.”

He is right. According to Vicki Canon, who oversees Christmas light sales at Ventura’s Green Thumb nursery, “Everyone’s selling out of icicle lights this year. We can’t keep them stocked.”

Also new this December said Canon, are “lights in motion,” or lights that blink at different speeds, fade in and out, with all reds coming on simultaneously, then all blues, etc., plus lights that chase and follow each other, all programmed on a computer chip, which most homeowners can mount.

“But if it’s raining, I’d recommend you keep the little control box dry,” Canon said.

No one outdoes the Becker family on Simi Valley’s Sycamore Drive for sheer wattage, or for that matter, electric bills, which can set them back as much as $500 every December.

Illuminated castles, moving trains, cartoon characters, elves and hot-air balloons are but a few features at the Beckers.

The aforementioned home light shows don’t even include those entered in the home-decorating contests proliferating around Ventura County.

Moorpark’s arts committee will judge its home-decorating contest Sunday night.

Last year’s winner, a crowd-pleasing “101 Dalmatians” display on Millerton Road, was especially popular with kids, said contest chairwoman Eloise Brown.

The Oxnard Shores Neighborhood Council has already declared a winner: Connie Bailey’s house at 5033 Island View St., with its enormous flying Santa in his sleigh.

In Ojai, the Board of Realtors will judge its first home-decorating contest next week.

A neighborhood trend is emerging at Descanso and Vallerio avenues behind the Vons store, where half of the entries are located.

Almost all of the houses will have their lights on display through Christmas, if not into 1998.

Most people flip their light switches on about 6 p.m., and usually turn everything off by 10 p.m. so they don’t drain the neighborhood of power. Several homeowners said that in rainstorms they will temporarily “go dark.”

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Colors of Christmas

Here are some locations of spectacular Christmas light displays:

Camarillo: Aviano Drive; Gemini Avenue; Dewayne Avenue

Moorpark: 4542 Millerton; 13567 Candlewood Court; 10309, 10311, 10313 Willow Hill Drive

Ojai: Intersection of Vallerio and Descanso avenues; 1025 and 1035 S. Rice Road

Oxnard: “Christmas Tree Lane,” F Street between 5th and Doris streets

Oxnard Shores: 5033 Island View St.; 5144 Seabreeze Way; 5115 Breakwater Way

Simi Valley: 1332 Sycamore Drive

Thousand Oaks: 1789 Wellesley Drive

Ventura: 185 W. Simpson St.