It’s going to be so lit - Christmas lights back

With just two weeks until the Nelson Tasman Christmas Lights trail goes live, previous winners Louis and Kristina Hornell from Richmond’s Oxford Court Motel are almost ready to flick their festive switch.

“We started decorating the second week of October as we have well over 100 inflatables, 50,000 lights and loads of different scenes to create,” Louis says.

As well as their 16ft giant inflatable Santa, this year there are a few surprises too.

“It’s been two years since we entered the competition as it didn’t run last year due to Covid, so we’ve had time to accumulate way more things.”

Although the new star attraction is being kept under wraps until just before 1 December, Louis has revealed a piece of local history will be on display this year.

“We’ve acquired the vintage, life-sized Santa and Mrs Claus fibreglass figurines which were originally in Richmond Mall during the 1980s.”

He says that because they have so much stuff, their one Christmas storage shed has since turned into two and both are stuffed full of boxes from floor to ceiling.

“We use every single thing we have, Kristina is Christmas-obsessed.”

And their love of Christmas is much appreciated by families all over the region.

“It was a slow start last time around because we had torrential rain and high winds for most of December, but we ended up staying open for two weeks into January so people could still come and visit.”

The house attracts so many people that there are often queues up the street.

“The whole street is just lined with cars and families walking back and forth.

“We had over 1000 people visit on Christmas Eve, but it could be even more than that, it gets crazy.”

They say the only downside is the kids who are left to wreck the displays because their parents aren’t supervising them properly.

“It’s a real challenge to make everything accessible for people to look at while trying to protect the displays too.

“We walk around to keep an eye on the younger kids, as a lot of parents don’t supervise their children, so we have had things destroyed because of that before,” Louis says.

It costs the family about $6000 to put on the display as hiring the knuckle boom to put the lights on the high-pitched roof costs them about $1600 alone.

“With that cost, along with electricity, the decorations themselves and candy to hand out to the kids, it’s not cheap. But we love doing it.”