JACKSON – A holiday tradition has lit up the neighborhood for the yuletide season creating a Christmas light show – and also serves as a benefit for charity.
Michael Cook and members of his family started the decoration process of their home on 1 Carlson Court before the weekend of Thanksgiving but it actually involves a yearlong planning process.
“We start working on this between building stuff and sequencing songs in July or August. Some of the lights we have this year are all new and that took a considerable amount of time to work and we start putting stuff up right after Halloween. We’ll be backing that up a bit next year because it has been taking longer and longer,” Cook said.
The holiday house hosted by the Christmas couple Michael and Carol Cook has run for the past eight years. “We are at about 30,000 lights, four singing trees, a 20-foot spiral tree and a 1,008-bulb pixel matrix which we can do imaging with,” Michael Cook said.
“All the lights are synchronized to music. The show consists of seven songs and runs for approximately 20 minutes. We went live on November 30 and we will run through Jan 1. The show will run nightly from 6 -10 p.m. Sunday – Thursday and 6-11 p.m. Friday and Saturday. The show is free but we do accept donations,” Michael Cook added.
When asked if the couple gets any help from other family members or friends Carol Cook responded with a smile, “it’s just us.”
A few days prior to Thanksgiving, the Cooks were outside admiring the brightly lit house. Michael Cook was sporting his bright orange Santa cap which featured the letters MS. The cap was presented to him by representatives of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, an organization which has special significance for the family and where all donations made to the holiday house go. Orange is the color for the cause of curing MS.
“My stepson was diagnosed with juvenile MS at the age of 13. They say that between 5,000 and 11,000 kids have MS. It is rare that they are diagnosed that young. His first symptom was that he went blind in his left eye. He got the vision back after some treatments but he’s doing great,” Michael Cook added.
“The MS Society is the primary driver of research. That is why we picked them to donate to because we don’t want better treatments – which is nice – but we want a cure. They are researching that and coming closer and closer to it,” Michael Cook added.
The couple said heading into this season they raised over $26,700 and hope to break $30,000 by the end of the year. “To us that is unbelievable. At night we come out I go running up and down the road, saying ‘hello’ to everyone and handing out candy canes. Just the idea that people are willing to donate money to a cause like that because we have a house with a Christmas display is really overwhelming.”
The Christmas couple noted that this concept truly brings the spirit of the holidays home. “We can’t tell how many people stop by and see the house,” Carol Cook said.
“I wish we had a traffic counter but last year I handed out over 6,000 candy canes running up and down the road so if that is any indication as to how many people stop by – and not everyone takes a candy cane,” Michael Cook added.
Another commonly asked question of the Cooks was the cost of the electric from the display. Carol Cook said it wasn’t bad at all.
“The truth of the matter is our electric bill really isn’t bad. The new lights draw a little more power. I’m guessing for the month of December our bill will be maybe $50 or $60 higher than normal. Every single light out here is LED which draw a considerable amount less and when it is sequenced all the lights are flashing. Having all the lights on…is a rarity,” Michael Cook said.
“The percentage of lights on is relatively small. I suspect that the computer we have to run it draws more power then we put into the lights because the computer will run 24/7 until we turn it off. Some of the new lights are a bit more power hungry than what we had,” Michael Cook said.
“We try to be very mindful of the neighbors. When we start rolling a lot of people in the neighborhood come out to watch it – which is what it is for – and it tends to cause a little bit of a traffic issue. We try to be mindful of them and direct traffic to make sure people aren’t blocking driveways. We try to keep the neighbors in a good light. We are now up to two miles of wiring that we have to run every year,” Michael Cook said.
“We are already working on ideas for next year,” Carol Cook said. The holiday house has its own Facebook page, facebook.com/cookschristmasnj
