Light shed on Windcrest displays.
Windcrest residents learn to cope with popularity of holiday displays
There’s Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen, baby Jesus, the Bible and mechanical soldiers saluting.
These are just a few of the constellation of Christmas decorations that are bedazzling and bewitching carloads of families in search of holiday cheer during this year’s annual Light Up holiday celebration in Windcrest, the small incorporated city on San Antonio’s Northeast Side.
The 62-year-old tradition, which this year runs from Dec. 5 through New Year’s Eve, attracts so many visitors that the streets often resemble Times Square at rush hour, with bumper-tobumper traffic clogging the city’s normally quiet roadways.
But what’s it like to live in Windcrest in December, when it seems like the entirety of South Texas drives in to check out the light show and some houses are so bright they’re probably visible from the International Space Station?
For all its Peace on Earth, Goodwill Toward Men trappings, Light Up is also a competition, with winners in categories such as the Charlie Browniest house and the Clark Griswold for the most over-the-top decorations are awarded cash prizes. This year there are 83 homes registered in the competition and, for the first time, winners will be chosen by a vote of visitors, either online or via a QR code printed on the free map distributed at Windcrest’s City Hall building.
While there’s no requirement that homeowners decorate — and most blocks have several homes that remain dark during the event — residents say there’s a certain amount of pressure to participate.
“Anyone who moves here is soon approached by someone from the neighborhood saying, ‘Umm, you are going to be putting up lights next Christmas, right?’ ” said Luther Ward, who has lived in Windcrest for 12 years. “This is part of what it means to live in Windcrest.”
Most folks know what to expect when they buy in Windcrest. When Jennifer Newman and Jill Vogel were moving from McKinney to San Antonio several years ago, Newman agreed under one condition: that they buy a
house in Windcrest.
“I’d visited friends here and seen the lights and the small-town atmosphere,” said Newman, a major in the Texas Army National Guard. “So I always wanted to live here.”
After several years of just decorating their house and watching the cars drive by, the couple decided to enter the competition this year in a big way. “Since my wife and I are both Army, we’ve always decorated with a patriotic theme,” said Newman. “When we heard this year’s theme was ‘Let Freedom Ring,’ we were ready to go.”
With help from Vogel’s brother Randy, the couple decorated their house with 23 flags representing the U.S. military branches, including the new United States Space Force, and other aspects of military service. Several U.S. flags, made of red, white and blue Christmas lights, hang on the roof.
“This is the first year my wife and I are competing in the contest,” said Newman, who, in the summer, often scans online retailers for deals on off-season Christmas decorations. “I’d say we have about $1,000 worth of decorations on display.”
And while most of the lights are high-efficiency LEDs, the couple avoids a December bump in their electric bill by being on the electric company plan that evens out their monthly bill. “That way we know what we’re going to have to pay in December,” she said.
Standing on her front lawn talking to a couple of visitors, Newman enjoyed one of the side benefits of living in Windcrest during the Light Up: hearing shouted compliments from those slowly driving down the street, windows open and often playing Christmas tunes on their car speakers.
“Merry Christmas!” children called out. And “We love your house!”
“We have people coming through all the time who tell us that seeing the lights makes them want to buy a home here,” Newman said.
To keep their Light Up budget in line, Susie Hamilton and Marc Sauceda are slowly building their decoration collection year by year. Still, Hamilton estimates they spent at least $500 on new items this year.
“It floored me how much little things, like
those plastic stakes you use to run lights along the ground, can cost,” she said. “We even went to several estate sales in the neighborhood this year, hoping to find some cheap decorations.”
She estimated they have about $1,500 worth of lights and other decorations throughout the yard, which is still not enough for their long-term plans. “I think it’ll be several years before we can match what some of our neighbors do,” she said.
While an estimated 25,000 cars pass through the city during a typical holiday season, this year’s event appears to be busier than usual, according to city public relations director Elizabeth Dick. She credits the increase to people wanting to get out of the house and do something safe with the family.
“We’ve been seeing lines of cars until midnight some nights and expect bigger crowds once school is out for the holidays,” she said.
With traffic at an all-time high, it’s more important than ever for residents to have a plan should they need to get into or out of the neighborhood once the sun goes down. Many, like Rico Sardelli, have become adept at playing traffic cop, stopping traffic in the street so his wife, Nancy, can back out of the driveway when she needs to leave the house.
Hamilton and Sauceda are luckier. Their house has an alley in the back they use to avoid the worst of the traffic. That’s especially helpful since they both work nights, he as a professional musician and she as a burlesque dancer who performs under the name Suki Jones.
Still, the traffic means residents have come to expect that even the simplest chores will take longer than usual.
“Last night I went to a meeting at City Hall and what should have been a three-minute drive home took 15,” Hamilton said. “But I love living here. I grew up in the ’90s coming to see the Windcrest lights.”
Others simply surrender to the throngs. “A lot of us just don’t go out after dark,” Dick said.
Newman and Vogel take a similar laissez-faire attitude. “Do we get cabin fever?” Newman asked rhetorically. “No, we love it. We’re kind of homebodies anyway, so we have no problems staying close to home.”
The Light Up is so popular that some homeown
ers have to take steps to protect their property. The entire Moorside Drive cul-de-sac, for example, is bordered by a low, lighted
fence that runs in front of all nine houses and is intended to stop cars from pulling up into the driveways and people walking
onto the front lawns.
“We’ve had people who come into the yard to take photos standing in front of the decorations,” Nancy
Sardelli said. “But it’s dark and there are all these wires and plugs on the ground. We don’t want anybody to trip and get hurt.”
The Sardellis, who’ve lived in Windcrest since 2007 and whose front yard looks like something out of a Vegas casino fever dream, decorate the backyard, too, complete with lights on the bushes and several large stars hanging from the fence.
“I like having it because nobody can see it but us,” said Nancy Sardelli. “It’s our own private light show.”
Because even those living in a fishbowl of twinkling lights need a little privacy once in a while.