Display with 22,250 LEDs wins decorating contest
Sure, the forecast for Saturday was nearly 60 degrees and rainy. But at Bryan Galus' house in Jackson Township, it was beginning to look a lot like Christmas.
Or at least “Christmas Vacation.”
With 22,250 LEDs strung around his home, Galus was deemed the winner of Zelienople Historical Society's first Griswold Decorating Contest.
Adel Fatur, who organized the event for the historical society, said Galus' award was fitting, given he was “just short of Clark Griswold's 25,000” lights.
“To be honest, I didn't actually go into this contest with the intention of winning,” Galus said. “I just thought it'd be neat to enter it.”
Each year, Galus and his family choose a theme for his Christmas decorations. For 2021, they selected a teal-and-purple color pattern, similar to the Cinderella Castle at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Fla.“We have a rotation where, one year, I'll do something old-fashioned,” Galus said. “Last year I did all-white lights with a Nativity outside.”He added he has decorated his house since 2007, when Galus purchased his first home.“I've always decorated for Christmas, and, prior to that, at my first job — I actually worked at an elementary school in Hermitage, Pa. — I did landscaping there, so I did all their Christmas lights,” Galus said. “My collection grew and grew over the years. My goal was to do it tastefully and not tacky.”There's also a bit of an energy-savings with this theme over last year's, as his 6,550-foot-long — or 1.2-mile-long — assortment of lights emits more than 1 million candela of light, according to Fatur.“Last year we did incandescent bulbs, which run a lot of electricity,” Galus said. “This year we went all-LED to save a little on the utility bills.”It took roughly 40 hours spread across two weeks for Galus to hang all the lights. He started the project the weekend of Nov. 12, and added he plans to keep them up until Jan. 8 or 9.“Surprisingly it takes a lot less time to take it all down,” Galus said. “It takes under eight hours; last year it took me five or six hours to put it all away.”
While Galus won a $200 “Z-card,” or a certificate to local establishments, for his first prize rather than a weekend trip to an indoor waterpark in the Poconos — “we decided we wanted to spend the money locally in our own community,” he said — he wasn't the only winner. Fatur said a second-place winner received a “Christmas Vacation”-inspired “Jelly of the Month Club” membership.“We had a lot of people decorate, and there were probably 30, 35 (people) who sent in their application (for the contest),” Fatur said. “We were just glad that people came out and put their lights up. In the neighborhood where the winner lived, the whole neighborhood was decorated. It was just unbelievable, all the light in that neighborhood.”Galus shared Fatur's glee over the spread of holiday-themed decorations in his community.“It's nice to see a lot of people participating in decorating for the holidays and spreading some holiday cheer after such a tough year that we've all had,” he said.
