If you’re looking to get in the holiday spirit, but rather skip out on the crowds in Dyker Heights, this Bay Ridge house has decorations to rival the famous holiday neighborhood with one house only. Located at 635 79th Street in Brooklyn, Bay Ridge’s holiday house was created by Roy Jensen, father of Christina Jensen, who runs their popular Instagram for the house.
He began the tradition back in 1989 after first purchasing the property. Of course, the decorations began on a much smaller scale, like adding a red bow to the tree in the front yard. As years went on, he began adding lights and more decorations until it became an entire family tradition with the help of his daughters, Christina and Juliana. “It has grown into something bigger than we all expected,” shared Christina.
Nowadays, their annual Christmas decorations take about two and half weeks in total to put up. This involves taking down the decorations from the previous holiday (yes, the house gets decorated for all holidays year-round, not just Christmas), cleaning the front, prepping the new decorations and assembling everything.
The family plans months in advance, starting as early as August for the Christmas decorations. It all comes from the creativity and mind of Roy for how its to look exactly.
This year’s display showcases at least 50,000 lights and hundreds of dazzling decorations. As the collection of decorations grow by the year, the family has lost count of just how many truly embellish the house.
Interestingly enough, the Halloween decorations take the longest to put up out of all of the holidays. The fog machine and large animatronics make it a very high-maintenance task, with ensuring the fog machine consistently has liquid and piecing the animatronics together. Not to mention the hundreds of pumpkin and mums that consistently need to be swapped out.
“We want to be that something for the community,” Christine shared with us. “We hope to bring a sense of joy and holiday spirit for our community. We have so many regulars who pass by and cheer us on while we’re decorating, and it’s a great feeling for all of us that they enjoy seeing it as much as we love doing it. Everyone needs some joy in their life, and if all it takes is a visit to The Holiday House then we’ve done our job. What started as a family tradition turned into something we never imagined. Since we’ve gone viral online, we’ve engaged with so many people out of state, all over the world who come by just to visit our display. It’s a wonderful feeling for everyone.”
The house is never without decorations; the lights are up 24/7 all year so be sure to stop by to see the magic for yourself!