‘Tis the season to be jolly, and for some that includes driving through town to see holiday decorations. Several houses in State College are known for their flashy displays, but one family is planning to rein it in after nearly two decades.
When driving down Shamrock Avenue, you’ll see several yards and homes lit up and decorated for the holidays. One home even has a sign saying to tune your car radio to 105.3 FM to listen to Christmas music.
That home at 1231 Shamrock Ave. belongs to Sheri and Jimmy Vuccolo. They've been decorating for Christmas for 18 years. Their yard lights up the whole neighborhood. There’s a light-up nativity scene, a penguin choir, gift boxes, candy canes, snowmen, polar bears, and several large inflatable decorations.
The Vuccolos only put up this level of display around this time of year.
“We have an Easter bunny that we put out. If we remember. We have a couple things we put out at…" Sheri said, and Jimmy followed up with, “Halloween. That's about it.”
Jimmy said their Christmas decorations take up most of their storage. But he said they’re ready to start scaling back their Christmas display, too.
“It's become a lot of work for the two of us," Jimmy said. "And not only dealing with displays, you know, the setup time, but, critter problems, you know, wires get cut. I think I've had to patch at least 20 things this year.”
The Vuccolos say scaling back was a hard decision to make, and even though some have offered to help set up, it wouldn’t be enough for the constant maintenance the display needs.
“We have a lot of sad neighbors," Jimmy said. "And there are a lot of sad people that we are kind of hanging it up this year.”
The Vuccolos say they’ve enjoyed seeing cars drive past for the past 18 years, and Sheri says they’re not ready to let it go just yet.
“We're still going to decorate. We’re just… it's not going to be all of this stuff," Sheri said. "We're not totally sure exactly how much it's going to be.”
The Vuccolos say you can still see their display this year every night from 5-10 p.m. They haven’t said exactly when they’ll take it down for the year.
