Madison countians have plenty of Christmas spirit, but one Madison family continues to take their passion for the holiday season to a whole new level.
For nearly two decades, the Richardson family transforms its yard on Sundial Road into a true winter wonderland, complete with more than 100,000 LED lights, as many as 300 inflatables and 250 wired figurines and other different type of items.
Between Hayden, his parents Carol and Mike and his wife Abby, it takes nearly 800 man-hours to get the entire display put out.
And that number goes up every year as they add more and more.
“We’re always thinking about what we want to do and what we can add from last year,” Hayden Richardson says. “We’re constantly trying to improve the experience for the people who come out to enjoy the lights, and the ‘oohs and ahs’ and the smiles on the faces of people from 1 to 101 makes it all worth it.”
The Richardsons started decorating their yards 19 years ago. At that time, Hayden was 6 and his parents, Carol and Mike, just wanted to do something subtle.
They propped up a couple of wire-framed deer and a nativity scene. The next year, there was an inflatable Santa Claus and Frosty the Snowman.
The year after that, some elves and a full-sized, lit-up Christmas tree joined the display.
“They just kept adding to it,” Hayden explains. “I don’t even remember what Christmas was like before we started this.”
Eventually, the lights started to draw crowds. At first, folks would just drive by real slow. Then, they began to stop and take pictures.
Eventually, there were so many people driving by to get a look at the display that the city of Madison’s police department started placing patrolmen at the entrances of the neighborhood to direct traffic.
The Richardsons set up a web site richarsonlightshow.com to handle inquiries where they announce hours of operation and provide maps to coordinate traffic.
They synchronized the lights to music, which can be heard on 99.9 FM in the immediate vicinity, with the help of a computer program appropriately called Light-O-Rama.
A couple of years ago, they added live appearances by Santa, Rudolph and Frosty the Snowman several times throughout the evening.
In 2014, the Richardson’s show was voted as the third-best private light display in the country by USA Today readers. It’s grown so big that it has even attracted the attention of those as far away as Hollywood.
Last year, the Richardson Family Light Show was featured on the TV show “The Great Christmas Light Fight” on ABC.
The segment with the Richardsons ran about 11 minutes, even though the TV crew followed the family’s progress in setting up their display for days.
“We really didn’t know what to expect from the finished product,” Hayden said. “There were some things that happened that we thought would definitely make the show, but didn’t. It was really interesting to see how they edited down several days of filming into our segment.”
While very cool, bringing Tinseltown to Madison was never the goal of the family.
Their original reason for starting the display is the same today as it was then — to spread a little holiday cheer and inform guests about the true meaning of Christmas — the birth of Jesus Christ.
“Quote from Carol Richardson”
The display is open to the public from Nov. 29 to Dec. 27 from 5:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. The display will stay lit until 10 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays, plus the five days leading up to the big day from Dec. 20 to Dec. 25.
