Crystal Lake home is “making spirits bright” with its elaborate holiday lights display show
Brandon L McBryde The “Shulfer Family Light Spectacular” aglow at night.
CRYSTAL LAKE – With Thanksgiving now over and the next round of holiday festivities fast approaching, individuals can take delight in the return of elaborate home light shows such as one put on by Crystal Lake resident Joe Shulfer and his family.
The Shulfer family, which consists of Shulfer’s wife Amy and their three kids Aiden, Kiersten and Jocelyn, established their first holiday lights and music display back in 2018.
“It started with a Light-O-Rama controller which is a device to quickly turn single color lights on and off, sparkle, shimmer, fade and produce different effects like that. Aiden, a [seventh grader] at the time, was fascinated with the technology so he quickly took the lead and sequenced all of our songs/lights that first year,” said Shulfer, who works as an engineer and is the president of a Crystal Lake manufacturing company. “The following year we added RGB floodlights to our display. RGB stands for Red-Green-Blue which means you can send a signal to them that will change their color however you want.”
Shulfer explained that during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic last year, his family decided to revamp their light show to include what he described as, “RBG pixel technology which allows you to quickly change the color and brightness of every single light independently—this allows [us] to create some amazing effects, and most people have never seen anything like it before.”
This year, Shulfer states that the number of lights in their display has doubled, with his son continuing to be in charge of syncing the music to the lights.
As for what inspires Shulfer and his family to put on such an elaborate light show year after year, he explained:
“I like to build things that wow people; I like to learn new things and figure out how to do what might have seemed too hard to try before; I like setting an example for my kids about doing cool things that others can benefit from and enjoy; I like to do projects that my family can all contribute towards—for example, my daughter Kiersten has done some of our logo artwork, Aiden does the sequencing, Amy and Jocelyn help ‘push pixels,’” Shulfer said.
The “Shulfer Family Light Spectacular” display begins taking form approximately two to three weeks before Thanksgiving, according to Shulfer, who added that much of the work involves preparing for the mounting and wiring of the lights.
When asked if he ever has gotten to a point where it was too difficult to put on his light show, Shulfer responded with:
“No, however, I did get a little burned out about a month before the start of the show this year because we were asked to put on a similar display at Immanuel Lutheran [Church] in Crystal Lake. Building that display from scratch along with doubling the size of our own display quickly became overwhelming. We did, however, get everything done just in time for our opening night(s) on the Friday after Thanksgiving.”
Shulfer’s light display will feature six songs this year ranging from Christmas-inspired music to songs like “Blinding Lights” by The Weekend. Shulfer told My Huntley News that song selections are chosen by his family based on votes of their favorite songs.
Additionally, Shulfer and his family will have a collection box on their street corner asking visitors for donations of non-perishable food items that will later be given to the Crystal Lake Food Pantry. Individuals may also make cash donations if they would like.
“We started making collections for the food pantry in 2019 and it has been a growing success each year. Last year we collected over 1,000 pounds of food and several hundred dollars in cash donations,” said Shulfer.
The Shulfer family light display sees thousands of visitors throughout the holiday season, according to Shulfer.
“Opening night on the Friday after Thanksgiving last year (2020 COVID year) was the largest turnout we had ever seen. There were cars backed up so far down the street that you couldn’t see the end of the line. We ended up working out some traffic flow patterns with the police department to make sure intersections and roads were not blocked to keep everyone safe,” he said.
The Shulfer family light display is located at 6001 Hawthorne Lane in Crystal Lake and takes place nightly from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m.
Individuals have until Dec. 31 to see the elaborate display right before the start of a new year.
