People drive from all over to see this family's massive Christmas-lights display: 'The only license plate we've never seen is Hawaii'

Beth Greenfield
·Senior Editor

There are over-the-top Christmas lights displays, and then there’s the Gay family’s exhibit in LaGrangeville, N.Y. — which is in a league of its own as the largest residential Christmas lights display in the world.

The annual tradition began in 1995, when dad Tim wanted an extra-festive celebration in honor of the birth of his daughter, Emily Raejean. He started “with just 600 lights.” Today, he and wife Grace have two more kids in the mix — Daniel Arthur and John Timothy — and many, many more lights, with a grand total of 608,000. Other stats: The display has 1,608 “individually computer-controlled items outside,” and it requires nine miles of extension cords, with roughly 40 miles of wire.

A main computer runs the light show outside, plus there’s an FM transmitter “sending out the music, so the cars can tune to the right frequency and hear the music as they actually drive through the display.” (There’s mostly Christmas music on Sundays and Mondays, with pop programs by artists including Linda Eder and Coldplay on others.)

To get to the bright and sparkly compound — known as ERDAJT, an acronym from the first and middle initials of each of the three kids — people come from far and wide. In addition to getting foreign tourists from as far as Australia and London, “We’ve had people drive all the way from Georgia just to see the light display,” Tim says. “The only license plate we’ve never seen is Hawaii.”

ERDAJT made it into the Guinness Book of World Records for “most lights on a residential property” in 2014, and it has held its place ever since. “We now have more than we did when we set that record,” Tim notes.

People who sit in the car for long waits just to drive through are naturally curious about the Gays’ Christmas obsession, he says, and the family gets plenty of questions. “The most common question we get is ‘How much does the electricity cost?’ That question’s always a little disappointing,” he admits, “only because it’s only $350 and represents a tiny fraction of what the display itself costs.”

The labor of getting it all up is particularly taxing, he adds, explaining, “The physical part of the display starts in September. We take roughly 10 to 11 weekends to put the display up, and then after it’s over it takes us about a week to take it back down. And after December’s over, we rest for 11 months!”

But in December, Grace says, “It’s a monthlong party for us.” It’s also a nostalgic tradition that keeps on giving.

“What the light show really means to me now is this sense of family,” Tim says. “It started because I wanted to make Christmas special for my kids, but now I would tell you that it’s my kids making Christmas special for other kids.”

Read more from Yahoo Lifestyle:

Follow us on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter for nonstop inspiration delivered fresh to your feed, every day.