NAUGATUCK — Around the holiday season the traffic on Hopkins Hill Road, a cul-de-sac off of Mulberry Street, tends to pick up. There’s no stores with blockbuster Christmas sales on the road. Rather, cars line the street in front of Mike and Linda Mayfield’s home at 23 Hopkins Hill Road to view an extravagant musical Christmas lights show.
The Mayfields have put on the show for the past five years. Mike Mayfield, who coordinates the show, said they decided to do it after seeing a video of a decked-out home in Ohio with a lights show on the news.
At first, it was just the Mayfields who strung the lights. As the show has changed and grown over the years, Mike Mayfield said friends and family are now pitching in. It takes two weekends, six to eight hours each day, to get the show up and running, he said. There are 31 strands of lights with 120 lights on each for 3,720 lights on the Christmas tree in the front yard alone, he said. His best guess as to how many lights are a part of this year’s show is somewhere around 35,000.
The music selection for each year is important as well. Mike Mayfield said they try not to commercialize the show and to stay true to the meaning of Christmas.
“We pick and choose the songs carefully because it’s got to mean something,” he said.
This year, the lights are choreographed to “Wizards in Winter,” “O Holy Night,” and “Christmas Eve in Sarajevo.”
Over the past five years, the show has become a Christmas tradition in the borough. Mike Mayfield said right around Thanksgiving people will start driving by the house to make sure the show will go on again.
For Mike Mayfield the delight people receive from watching the show makes all the work worth it.
“This is what gives me all the payment in the world, just seeing people enjoy it,” he said.
The show begins daily at 5:30 p.m. and runs until 10:30 p.m. Sundays through Thursdays and until midnight on Fridays and Saturdays. To hear the music, tune into to 107.7 FM. Mike Mayfield said the show typically stays up for a couple of weeks into January.
