Making Light : Spirit Hits the Circuit as Neighbors Plug Into Decorating With Energy and Animation

Long before Thomas Edison’s electric light laid the groundwork for colored bulbs and strings of lights that twinkle, blink and play music, people were decorating the exteriors of their homes at Christmas.

Light bulbs just made it possible to do more, to do it faster and to light up the night with a lot less worry about burning the place down.

In Southern California, the lack of snow and wintry chill made people even more determined to make it begin to look a bit like Christmas ‘long about Dec. 1.

Yes, Virginia, it wasn’t all that long ago that a Southern California street where most of the homes weren’t well-lighted from shortly after Thanksgiving until New Year’s Day was a rarity indeed. It took the energy crisis of 1973, the subsequent soaring of electricity bills and a couple of recessions--including the current one--to dampen holiday decorating spirits to the point that it now is possible in Orange County to drive for blocks and blocks and see only a scattering of decorated front yards.

But don’t despair!

Armed with a map book, a thermos of the hot beverage of your choice and a copy of this handy guide to some of Orange County’s most uniquely decorated neighborhoods, you still can treat the kids--and yourselves--to a taste of what it was like before the energy and economy Grinches started stealing that sign of the season away.

And it isn’t just the well-publicized events we’re talking about.

Did you know about the luminaria of Anaheim and Fullerton, or Candy Cane Lane in Rancho Santa Margarita or the primitive Nativity scene, with more than 500 hand-painted clay figures, that fills a 74-year-old woman’s front yard in Santa Ana each year?

The list is arranged roughly from north to south, and should offer even the most insatiable Christmas decoration fanatics at least two evenings of viewing. It doesn’t pretend to offer every well-decorated block and skips most single-home displays.

But read along and you’ll discover a dozen of Orange County’s best-dressed neighborhoods and two special homes no one should miss.

LAKEFRONT LIGHTS

The 120 homes that line the one-mile perimeter of man-made Eastlake in Yorba Linda have been lighting up for five years, said homeowner Sue Coventon.

The community’s homeowner association sponsors a series of seasonal events, including North Orange County’s own boat parade (the paddle boats and small sailboats of the Eastlake residents)--which was held Dec. 12 and 13.

Until the lights come down Jan. 1, visitors can walk or drive the streets of the Eastlake Shores development and see homes draped in thousands of lights, some with elaborate Christmas scenes in the front yards as well.

To get there: Take the Riverside Freeway to Imperial Highway, head north to Esperanza, turn east to Fairmont Boulevard and then go north again to Paseo de las Palomas. Turn east to Vista del Mar, then north, and you are on the boundary of Eastlake Shores.

Hours: 5 p.m. until 10 p.m., through New Year’s Eve.

CANDLE-LIT WALKS

There are at least two Orange County neighborhoods--in Anaheim and Fullerton--that shun electric lights and other contemporary trappings of the season for a night or two as they light up in a very old-fashioned way, with luminaria--votive candles resting on a bed of sand inside a brown paper bag and glowing a soft golden-brown through the paper.

Tradition has it that luminaria lining a front walk let the Holy Family know that there is room for Mary and her child at that house.

Fullerton’s Sunny Ranch neighborhood, with 51 houses, will be lighted tonight and Sunday with almost 6,000 luminaria, said resident Phyllis Valla. Neighbors and anyone else who wants to join in also will be caroling from house to house tonight, she said. A costumed Santa will be standing at the entrance to the neighborhood, off Harbor Boulevard, to greet visitors.

To get there: Take Harbor to La Entrada Place and turn west (follow Santa’s directions). It is the only way in and out of the tract.

Hours: 6-9 p.m. tonight and Sunday.

Anaheim’s Rio Vista neighborhood began its one-night light show a decade ago when Bill and Linda Wilson, natives of New Mexico, moved in and brought the old Spanish custom with them.

Linda Wilson said theirs was the only one of the 120 houses in the tract lit with luminaria that first Christmas Eve in 1982.

“But the next year a couple of the neighbors asked us about it, and we had my dad send the special candles from New Mexico. We got enough for six houses. It kept growing, and when we hit 30 houses a few years later it got too much for my dad to send all those candles.”

Now, with all 120 homes lit at dusk on Christmas Eve, the Wilsons collect money from most of the residents and send their annual order directly to a factory in Texas that makes the 12-hour votive candles.

How many does it take?

The past few years, Linda Wilson said, the order has been for 13,000 candles.

In addition, the neighborhood buys 13,000 lunch bags from area supermarkets and collects three pickups full of sand donated by the R.J. Noble Co., a road-building company with a construction yard near the tract.

All day on the 24th, neighbors scoop sand from piles dumped on strategic corners, put a couple of inches of it in each bag, plop in the candles and turn down the top edges of the bags to make cuffs that add rigidity.

By dusk every street in the small tract is lined with luminaria on both curbs and the inside edges of the sidewalks; most of the homes have luminaria leading to their front doors as well. All other lights in the tract are turned off, the candles are lit, and the scene is set for a breathtaking Christmas Eve experience.

To get there: Take the Orange (57) Freeway to Lincoln Avenue, take Lincoln east to Rio Vista Street and then head south. The tract is entered by turning west onto Allen Place--and then just follow the luminaria. Neighbors suggest parking outside the tract and walking through it as the best way to get the full impact.

Hours: 5 p.m. until the candles burn out, Christmas Eve only.

TEXAS-SIZE TREAT

The houses on the 7300 and 7400 blocks of Dallas Drive in La Palma vie annually with the homes around Fountain Valley’s Dahlia Circle for the informal title of Orange County’s most elaborately decorated neighborhood.

Things start on Dallas in October when some of the families drag out their lights and began testing them and replacing burned-out bulbs. Installation of the thousands of strands of lights, the animated Christmas characters, candy canes, ice-skating elves, reindeer, mangers and other flora and fauna of the season takes up most of November, and the lights go on at the beginning of December.

Residents Gary and Jan Hite, who started it all five years ago (and this year are selling their house--no Grinches need apply), say they do it for the smiles from passersby.

To get there: take the Riverside (91) Freeway to the Orangethorpe Avenue off-ramp, go a half-block west to Walker Avenue, turn south for about a mile to Houston Avenue. Turn west onto Houston; Dallas Drive is the first cross street you’ll come to.

Hours: Dusk until 10 p.m., through Christmas.

DENNI STREET TRIO

Decorating on the 9900 block of Denni Street in Cypress began six years ago with when Robert and Maria Fisher hoisted a plywood Santa onto their rooftop. The next year the couple added several reindeer, and Robert Fisher made plywood cutouts of the three Wise Men for a neighbor.

“It all kind of snowballed from there,” Maria Fisher said.

There are only three houses this stretch of Denni, but they burn enough electricity at night to put the dynamo at Hoover Dam on overtime. The lights outline rooftops, Christmas scenes with cutout characters and a host of other decorations. “We all add some new thing each year,” Fisher said.

To get there: Take Ball Road to Denni Street, turn north and the three houses are at the corner, facing Veterans Park.

Hours: Dusk until 9:30 p.m., through Jan. 1.

HARBOUR LIGHTS

Huntington Harbour, that is.

The luxury home development at the north edge of Huntington Beach was built on a series of manufactured canals and sold in the early 1960s as an alternative to Newport Beach. As a result, a lot of people there live in waterfront homes and have boats. And when you have boats at Christmas, you have boat parades and lots of lights on the waterfront homes.

The Huntington Harbour Christmas boat parade is over. But equally viewable are the myriad homes in the community that have laid on decorations with a lavish and sometimes professional hand. A commercial boat tour of the lights is offered four times a night through Wednesday, but you also can drive or walk through the community, detouring up the side streets leading to the canals to view the decorated waterfront facades of the houses.

To get there: Take Warner Avenue west to Pacific Coast Highway, then go north about a mile to Coral Cay Lane and turn right. Coral Cay leads onto one of the six separate “islands” that make up Huntington Harbour. A good map of the area will show you routes to the others.

Hours: Dusk until 10 p.m., through Christmas.

DAHLIA DELIGHTS

Also known as “Those houses off Heil,” this Fountain Valley neighborhood is perennially on the short list for best decorated.

Things started on Dahlia Circle in 1970 but have spread to surrounding streets. This year, neighbors estimate, 75 or more of the homes in the neighborhood bordered by Heil and Edinger avenues and Brookhurst and Bushard streets are participating.

The area gets so many visitors that Fountain Valley police began erecting barricades several years ago and allow only foot traffic into the tract from 5-10 p.m. during the season, which lasts until Dec. 26.

Ann DePierro and her husband, Dennis, have lived on Dahlia since the beginning and have watched as the decorating spirit of the half-dozen homeowners there overflowed into the rest of the neighborhood.

The DePierros’ decor consists of an abundance of lights and a Christmas scene. This year, Ann DePierro said, the couple chose “Wise men still seek Him” as their theme and feature a Santa figure adoring baby Jesus as the central part of their decorations.

The decor is fairly elaborate by most definitions, but DePierro said it is “pretty low-key compared to most of the others around here.”

One of her personal favorites, she said, is a house several blocks away where the owners have installed working carousel horses on their porch posts. The gaily painted horses, softly lit through a gauze screen, travel up and down the posts.

To get there: Take surface streets or the San Diego (405) Freeway to Mile Square Park in Fountain Valley. From the corner of Edinger Avenue and Brookhurst Street, go south on Brookhurst about one-third mile to Thistle Avenue and turn west. Thistle is the entrance to the tract. The police officers directing traffic will help from there.

Hours: 5-10 p.m., through Christmas.

WAVERLY WONDER

This is one of two listings that involve only single houses instead of whole streets or neighborhoods. But some things are too good to pass up even if you have to bend the rules, and this is one of ‘em.

In 1990, Randy and Jennifer Gates placed a guest register and a pen atop one of the brick stanchions at the beginning of their driveway in Orange and posted a sign asking visitors who drove by to view their Christmas decorations to sign it.

They collected 10,000 names that year, and last year they got more than 12,000 signatures: The Gates’ elaborate holiday decorations definitely draw crowds.

The couple started decking out their house with holiday trim five years ago, and Randy, a builder by trade, just can’t stop.

He said he spends the equivalent of three full weeks each year--spread over six months--getting things ready and building new scenes to add to his tableau. Installation begins on or about Thanksgiving Day, and the lights are officially turned on three to five days later (depending on Santa Ana wind conditions--the whole thing blew down in post-Thanksgiving winds this year and last year).

This year, in addition to the ice-skaters on the lake, the large-scale train, the manger scene and candy canes, the animated elves, 13-foot lighted tree atop the house, the scores of strands of Christmas lights, the toy shop and the myriad other figurines, the Gates’ tableau includes a computerized Santa’s order-processing scene, with an elf busily entering children’s toy orders into a glowing computer.

The Gates started all this for their oldest child, now 10, and kept adding things as the family grew (they also have a 4-year-old, a 2-year-old and a 1-year-old). This year, it fills their entire front yard and half the next-door neighbor’s.

The Gates put out a wishing well last year and donated to the Providence Speech and Hearing Center in Orange the more than $2,000 in coin and bills that was tossed in. Money collected from offerings this year will go the the Speech and Learning Center in Buena Park.

To get there: Take Tustin Street to Collins Avenue, go west on Collins to Waverly Street and turn left; or take Glassell Street or Cambridge Street to Collins, turn east to Waverly and then turn right.

Hours: 5-10 p.m., through Jan. 1.

GRAND OLD ORANGE

Old Towne Orange has its historic plaza with a towering Santa, gigantic snowman and a traditional Nativity scene. And the municipal decorating spirit seems to have been caught by neighbors on a nearly two-block stretch of nearby Grand Street.

From now until just after Christmas, most of the homes on the 300 and 400 blocks of South Grand in Orange will be sporting a variety of lighted Christmas decor. It is pretty low-key compared to many other areas, but the broad street with dozens of old-fashioned bungalows and Craftsman cottages all decked out in holiday glitter is fun to drive.

To get there: Iake the Garden Grove (22) Freeway to the Grand Avenue or Glassell Street off-ramps, go north on Glassell to La Veta Avenue, turn east for two short blocks to Grand and then drive north.

Hours: Dusk until 10 p.m., through Christmas.

BETHLEHEM A LA MEXICO

This Santa Ana scene is the second of the one-house offerings. The story speaks for itself.

Every year since 1960, Rosario Velarde has erected an elaborate Christmas offering in the front yard of her modest home on East Warner Avenue in Santa Ana.

The multilevel panoramic layout, which offers 30 scenes from the Nativity story, is the 74-year-old woman’s way of keeping the promise she made 42 years ago to do something special to honor Jesus if He would help her survive a critical illness, she said through an interpreter.

This year, Velarde did the work while hooked up to a tank that feeds oxygen to her cancer-riddled lungs. She began the laborious task Nov. 1 and finished Dec. 16, installing more than 500 clay figures she and her husband have been given or have purchased on trips to Mexico over the years.

Velarde’s Christmas scene covers the entire width of her front yard and rises from the ground on a terraced platform to a height of about five feet. It includes miniature waterfalls, handmade wooden houses, a sandy desert and enough lights to keep a portable generator gulping $8 worth of gasoline each evening.

She doesn’t take down the display until after Jan. 6, the feast of the Wise Men and the day on which children in Mexico receive presents. She says she’ll keep doing it “as long as I have a life.”

To get there: From the intersection of Warner Avenue and Main Street in Santa Ana go two blocks east on Warner. Velarde’s home, at 219 E. Warner, is on the north side of the street.

Hours: All day, until 9:30 p.m., through Jan. 6.

MAIN STREET, TUSTIN

The 300, 400 and and 500 blocks of West Main Street in Tustin provide another glimpse of what old Orange County looked like. Many of the homes were built by prominent merchants and professionals in the late 1800s and early 1900s, and today’s residents strive to keep them looking original.

Resident Sally Vining said that in recent years, as young families have purchased places on West Main from older homeowners, elaborate outdoor Christmas decorations featuring lights, manger scenes and Christmas figures have reappeared with a vengeance, until almost all of the more than 40 homes in the three-block stretch are aglow each evening.

To get there: Find your way to the intersection of Newport Avenue and Main Street in Tustin and drive west down Main about five blocks and you’ll hit the 300 block of West Main (Chestnut Avenue in Santa Ana becomes Main heading east; Bryan Avenue in Irvine becomes Main heading west--you’ll probably want to avoid the freeways because of heavy construction activity and attendant congestion near the I-5 and 55 interchange).

Hours: Dusk to 10 p.m. until Jan. 1.

A NEWPORT KNOCKOUT

You have to have big bucks or well-to-do friends to get inside the gates at Harbor Ridge, the pricey private community atop a hill overlooking Newport Beach and its boat-filled harbor.

But each year the Harbor Ridge Women’s Club goes all out to decorate the entrance to the community, and everyone is welcome to drive up the hill and take a look.

“We’ve got a life-sized sleigh with Santa and packages and a lighted and decorated tree and three reindeer, all decorated with colored lights” as the centerpiece, said club member Beverly Stern. And all the topiary trees and bushes that landscape the entrance area are garlanded with Christmas lights. A series of four-foot candlesticks add more holiday glitter, and the guardhouse at the community entrance is dolled up with lights, fake snow and garlands to look like a Christmas cottage, she said.

The decorating is the work of 20 club members, and it has been Harbor Ridge’s seasonal gift to the city for the past 12 years.

To get there: Take MacArthur Boulevard to San Joaquin Hills Road or San Miguel Drive. From San Joaquin head south to Spyglass Hill Road and turn left; from San Miguel head north to Spyglass and turn right. From either direction, follow Spyglass up the hill to the Harbor Ridge entrance.

Hours: Dusk until dawn, through Jan. 3.

OSO MERRY

For the past 17 years, neighbors in the 30-home Baja Oso development in Mission Viejo have turned their five-street tract into a mini North Pole. A lot of the children for whom the first decorations were hung have grown and gone away to college, so things have toned things down this year, said resident Lynn Muller. “We’re not the Santa Claus Lane we used to be, but there still are about a dozen homes that have gone all out, and we still have a lot of people driving through to look at us.”

The decorations that have been created through the years--elaborate lighting displays, cut-out characters and other trim--stay with the houses when they are sold, Muller said, and some residents continue to add to their decor.

To get there: Take the San Diego Freeway to Oso Parkway and head east on Oso to Marguerite Parkway. Turn south for about two miles to Mesilla, turn west (the only way you can go on Mesilla) and you are in Baja Oso.

Hours: Dusk until 9:30 p.m. through Christmas.

CANDY CANE LANE

If you don’t think that Rancho Santa Margarita has been around long enough to have developed much in the way of neighborhood Christmas customs, check this out.

Richard and Cindy Porras ignited their street’s Christmas decorating passion six years ago, and this year all 16 homes on the cul-de-sac are sporting garlands of lights and other decorating items; 14 of the homes are participating in a shared decorating scheme that has turned Via Lantana into Candy Cane Lane for the duration.

Front yards on the street sport elves, giant lollipops, a gingerbread girl, candy canes--one of them 20-feet tall--and an assortment of Santas, snowmen and reindeer. One homeowner with a sense of humor has built a lopsided outhouse as the central ingredient in his “Santa’s pit stop” theme.

“This is the first year almost all the homes have gotten into it,” Porras said. “One neighbor is an excellent woodworker, and when we found out that everybody wanted to join in, we just had a big block party for the two weekends after Thanksgiving and spent the time making characters, painting them and installing lights. Everyone just got into it, and you can really feel the Christmas spirit.”

To get there: Take the San Diego Freeway to the Oso Parkway off-ramp; Oso to Antonio Parkway and Antonio north across Santa Margarita Parkway to Laguna. Then turn right on Laguna, left on Las Flores, right on Allyssum, right on Carrissa (nobody said this would be easy!), right on Larkspur, left on Felecia and, finally, left onto Via Lantana.

Hours: 5-9 p.m. through New Year’s Eve.