This is an article from SF (San Francisco) Gate.
We hope to see the display this year and get some pictures.
We don't consider this a submission for the contest but, a BRIGHT spot in CA. to see.
Merry glitzmas
With 80,000 lights and rooms of displays, the Rombeiros deck their Novato house into a ho, ho, home for the holidays
Alex Horvath, Special to The Chronicle
Friday, December 16, 2005
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In 1982, Edmundo Rombeiro celebrated his first Christmas in Novato by decorating the front yard of his home with a Nativity scene and happened to notice a young couple admiring his work.
"The people were so happy. I could see the smile on their face,'' Rombeiro, 66, recalled in the thick Portuguese accent retained from growing up in the archipelago of Portuguese islands known as the Azores. "I went up to them and invited them in. They were like, 'It's OK?' Yes. They came inside, and I started showing them everything and they were so happy."
Back then, decorations inside and out were pretty thin, but something had taken hold in Rombeiro's heart: an urge to share.
Later that evening, Rombeiro told his wife that he wanted to start inviting people inside to see the family's decorations. At first, Mary Jo was hesitant. Ultimately, the family decided to share their Christmas with the community.
"What we had up around the entire house you could put in one room," Rombeiro said. "Then my brother helped me. We would walk out to the cars and invite them in. Some would say yes, others thought we were crazy. Some would just take off."
In the 23 years since that first Christmas, Rombeiro has spread the happiness to the tune of roughly 40,000 visits last year. (Each visitor gets a complimentary candy cane; Rombeiro and family keep track of how many boxes of candy canes they go through each year.)
These days, Rombeiro and his family -- which includes grown daughter Kathy of Rohnert Park, and sister, Rosalina Medeiras, who lives nearby in Novato -- start decorating in September. They string up more than 80,000 lights on the outside alone. There are enough reindeer to form a herd, enough faux snow to classify as a blizzard, and enough wattage and signage to rival a North Pole mall. Christmas tunes blare from speakers in the eaves. Clearly, for the Rombeiros at least, there is never enough.
And that's just the outside.
Working into the wee hours, Rombeiro and family put together the hundreds -- it could easily be thousands -- of figurines and displays that fill each room of the house: elves and fiber-optic poinsettias and snowmen and all things seasonal. The indoor patio houses an intricate train set and monorail traveling nonstop through a wintry wonderland. There's also a lounge act: Novato resident Barry Costa as a hip-swiveling, singing Elvis impersonator known as "Elfis." (For more on "Elfis," see the Bay Folk Sketchbook by Bill Russell in Saturday's Datebook.)
Rombeiro is retired from Harris Digital Telephone Systems in Novato, where he manufactured systems for the Federal Aviation Administration. The job took him around the country where he installed the equipment at airports and got very acquainted with electrical wiring. It turns out Kathy Rombeiro, who is in charge of most of the snow decorations, also has the wiring gene. The family found that out one evening a few weeks ago when Mary Jo and Rosalina were stringing lights in front of the house and discovered one strand wasn't working.
"There were hundreds of lights, and Kathy walked up and said, 'It's that one right there.' And she was right!" Rosalina said.
Kathy Rombeiro said she is only good at fixing lights because she has had to do it so many times.
The extravaganza doesn't come cheap. The family spent $4,000 for this year's display. There is also the electric bill, which this time of year hits $1,500 or more a month despite a generator. There is a donation box at the entrance to the home -- underneath the candy-cane-shaped gate.
The Rombeiros shop for Christmas decorations year-round. Rosalina said she can tell when her brother has been in a store because the shelves with Christmas lights and decorations will be bare. In his defense, Rombeiro said he's not the only one in the family hooked on the holiday decorations.
"When it comes close to Christmas, my wife says, 'Don't buy anything else.' Then she is the first one to come home with something for Christmas," he said with a laugh.
On some nights, a steady stream of autos and tour buses cruise Devonshire Drive, vying for parking spots in order to tour the home.
On a recent evening, Rombeiro, decked out in a red coat and Santa hat emblazoned with a large E, welcomes the first group of strangers into his home.
"We have a lot of people come by here, sometime two and three times," Rombeiro said. "There are lots of families and neighbors. There is one little boy who believes that I am the real Santa Claus and that this is Santa's house!"
What do the neighbors think? At least one neighbor, Claire Paysse, who raised her three children six houses down the block from the Rombeiros, says: "We love it, and another result is that it's contagious. People who have never put up lights and decorations do now. It's really grown."
Paysse acknowledged that not everyone in the neighborhood has been thrilled about the attention the block gets every December, including one neighbor who hadn't put up lights or decorations since the energy crisis of the 1970s.
"He was really cranky about it," Paysse said. "A few years ago, he finally gave in and now he puts up lights."
Rombeiro's passion for Christmas began as a boy growing up on Sao Miguel, the largest island in the Azores. Raised as a Catholic, his family celebrated "Little Christmas" on Jan. 6, the feast of the Epiphany and the traditional day of gift exchange in the Portugese- and Spanish-speaking world. The Rombeiros still celebrate Christmas on Jan. 6, which is why they keep their house open on Dec. 25.
Part of Rombeiro's childhood is captured in a detailed and miniature display re-creating the Christmas celebrations from his youth on Sao Miguel. The room was started in October and took a month to complete.
Thank-you cards from all over the world hang in a hallway. A photo of one of the first visitors from 1982, back for a return visit several years later, also adorns the wall.
Kathy Rombeiro said it takes the family about two weeks to recuperate after the holiday -- and nearly three months to take down everything and put it away.
Edmundo Rombeiro said some people have urged him to turn the house into a business and turn a profit. He has refused.
"It's more about the joy of Christmas," Rombeiro said. "Everyone is welcome to the house. Everyone is welcome. We open our hearts and arms, the way things are supposed to be. We just hope that we move people to have more love for each other."
Outside the home, families take photographs of the displays. Novato residents Penny and Tilden Hansen had come with their grandchildren, Austin and Brent Eger, of Petaluma.
"I really need to bring my mother," Penny Hansen said. "She's 92 and in a nursing home battling dementia. But the one thing she remembers is the Christmas house. She asked about it tonight. Then the kids asked about it. We figured that we'd better come."
"He's not doing this for money -- he's doing this for love," Penny Hansen said of Rombeiro. "He's making us all children again."
Hansen said she planned to return soon with a visiting sister and with her mother.
Kathy Rombeiro said the reason so many people make the pilgrimage transcends religious and ideological beliefs.
"People are looking for something good in their lives," she said.
"Nowadays, you always hear there is so much bad in the world and everyone is in a rush and craving, actually, so much of what is good. People come here after shopping and doing the Christmas rush. They leave often saying thank you. ... Thank you for bringing the meaning of Christmas back to our lives."
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Holiday tours
The Rombeiro Christmas House is at 34 Devonshire Drive in Novato. The house is open for tours 6-10 p.m. daily through Jan. 6 (including Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Year's Eve and New Year's Day). Free, although the family accepts donations.
From the south: Take Highway 101 north to the San Marin exit; turn left over the overpass; turn left on Center Road; turn right onto Devonshire Drive.
From the north: Take Highway 101 south to San Marin exit and turn right; turn left on Center Road; turn left on Devonshire Drive.
