When the sun sets, holiday lights illuminate homes across the state, filling clusters of neighborhoods with festive cheer.
Families travel far and wide to drive through communities that unite to put on spectacular displays. Painting with Lights in Oskaloosa transforms downtown with over 200,000 lights. On Richland Court in Ankeny, more than 30 homes become "Gingerbread Lane," and tell the story of the Gingerbread Boy. You might have heard of an Indianola man who helped his entire neighborhood decorate their homes as a surprise for his Christmas-loving wife, who is living with dementia. The couple now sits in the heated garage to wave at people who drive through to see the displays.
But while some neighborhoods collaborate to celebrate the holiday season, certain homes across the state stand out as singular spectacles, dazzling with light extravaganzas in the middle of their otherwise modestly-decorated neighborhoods. These homeowners invest thousands in decorations they haul out of storage each year, and they spend countless hours programming intricate shows synced to music.
The Waverly Lights
“In our small little town, this is pretty big," said John Wiechmann, who has operated The Waverly Lights light display with his family since they moved to Waverly in 2002. Their home and front lawn are decorated with 40,000 LEDs, four sparkling arches and nine Christmas trees — each with 1,000 lights. Two other big trees with 5,000 lights each twinkle and dance to music they broadcast over the radio every evening through the holidays.
The tradition began humbly many years before, back in 1987, when John and his wife, Kendra, decorated their first home with just 300 lights and a few tin soldiers in the yard.
Over the years, their collection grew exponentially. Wiechmann said at one point he owned 225 plastic lawn statues, called blowmolds. Most were gifts from his children, which they surprised him with every Christmas and birthday.
“Every time we had anything, it was always Christmas. Everything's Christmas,” he said.
The lights are sequenced to nearly 30 minutes of Christmas songs, as well as Wiechmann's favorite hits from bands like KISS, Skrillex and Phish. In its heyday, Wiechmann said the Waverly Lights featured around 120,000 lights, and cars would line up outside to see the spectacle. The Wiechmanns also began accepting donations that went toward St. Jude's Children's Hospital — they've donated over $35,000 over the years.
This year, however, marks the end of an era. With their children grown and the display becoming too large to manage themselves anymore, John and Kendra have decided that this will be their final year putting on The Waverly Lights. They plan to sell the entire collection for $7,000, in hopes that a new host will carry on the tradition.
“I'll miss the stories," Wiechmann said, reflecting on the splash the display made in his small town, as he recalled how he'd program the show during his lunch periods when he owned the local Ziggy's Domino's Pizza in town.
It's a bittersweet moment for John and Kendra, with at least one silver lining.
"Missing the setup? Missing the tear down? No," he laughed.
One of the biggest undertakings for the Wiechmanns was switching over to pixel lights, which allow individual lights to operate independently from the others, rather than full strands of lights blinking on and off together. It can take up to 15 hours to sequence a three-minute song.
You can view The Waverly Lights from 5 — 10 p.m. Sunday — Thursday and 5 — 11 p.m. Friday & Saturday through Jan. 1.
Ingalls Christmas Lights
Electrician PJ Ingalls has done "dancing light shows" since 1998, but eventually got the materials to do a pixel-sequenced show at his family's home in Bancroft. He made the decision to spend the extra time programming each light when the pandemic came around.
“I wasn't going to do it," he said initially, but then changed his mind. "... I said, ‘Well, everybody's locked down, and they need something to see.’”
Ingalls Christmas Lights draws crowds with their annual show. This year, the full show runs for an hour and a half, packing in 27 songs and utilizing around 90,000 lights — not counting a TV display on the roof, which contains 100,000 pixels on its own.
The display can take as long as two weeks for his family to finish setting up, but Ingalls says it's worth it to see the joy it brings.
“I mean, the crowds — it just blows me away," Ingalls said. "I can't believe people drive that far to come and see Christmas lights.”
Unlike The Waverly Lights and other displays, Ingalls doesn't accept donations.
"I tell them, ‘Give them to your own charity or church. I don't want any money,’" he said. "I don't do it for the money. My pay is when I come up to one of the cars that are out looking and there's little kids in that car, and they're screeching and just enjoying it. That's my pay.”
You can view the Ingalls Christmas Lights from 5:10 p.m. — 10 p.m. Monday — Sunday through Jan. 1.
