Are These Wyckoff Christmas Lights The Best In Bergen County?

WYCKOFF, NJ — In what’s been a year to forget, Jerry Ghinelli is once again trying to bring some much-needed light.

As is Wyckoff tradition, Ghinelli decks his Zabriskie Pond home out with roughly 175,000 Christmas lights, and his neighbor, Barry Houldsworth captures it on video.

The tradition began in 2006, when the Ghinelli kids, whose parents own a home on a dead end street in the Zabriskie Pond area of Wyckoff, believed there wouldn't be enough light for Santa Claus to find the house.

So Ghinelli contracted out the holiday lights, and Santa delivered the presents.

"Back then I had the money and not the time," said Ghinelli, who started hanging the lights himself in 2011.

Since, the decorations have evolved into a holiday staple in the Bergen County community, bringing as many as 100 people to his home in the span of a couple hours on one Christmas Eve, he estimates.

Given the volume of lights he has to hang, Ghinelli usually starts working on the project in the summer, which provided a reprieve for him this year amid the coronavirus pandemic.

"I would get outside, and it was a break," he said, adding that his business "has suffered" during the pandemic.

Aside from the pandemic, Ghinelli had a number of nuisances during this year's preparation.

Namely, the light-stealing squirrels and a deer who made off with a light net wrapped on its antlers.

In what he calls his first world problems, Ghinelli said at first he was a bit upset, but then laughed it off, remembering, he said, that the trees belong to the squirrels.

That scene is perhaps most indicative of what keeps Ghinelli, now 70, going when it comes to the project that he calls a labor of love.

"Especially this year, it’s been such a difficult year for so many people in so many ways, this at least brings a little joy," he said.

Take a tour of his property in the video below, courtesy of Barry Houldsworth and his company, Avios Aerial Media:

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