MARYVILLE, Ill. — There’s something special to see in Maryville.
One family group has decorated their entire street for Christmas. The Barbarotto and Uchitjil families have been decorating their homes for over 10 years and have won numerous lighting awards.
“We all get together as a family and we help each other do the decorations and I do all of the music and animated stuff,” said Jeff Uchitjil, a computer programming engineer by trade.
The music and light show is run by a computer and broadcasts over a low-power FM frequency that you tune your car radio to.
Uchitjil spends hours throughout the summer sequencing the entire display. The family starts decorating before Halloween and ramps up their efforts throughout November.
“Some of the lights that go up are shared between Christmas and Halloween, and then the first part of November I get started on putting some of the pieces up here and there. And then I take the full week before Thanksgiving to do a lot of the work,” said Uchitjil.
The lighting display started out small and has grown to over 50,000 lights with over 15,000 of those animated.
“I just enjoy the people coming by and especially the kids getting a kick out of it, that’s really about the enjoyment of others to me,” said Uchitjil.
The display is on Barbarotto Lane and runs nightly from 4:30 -10:30 p.m. through Jan. 1.
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