If you want to see some of the most extravagant Christmas light displays, you should make the trip to the Dyker Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn. Many of the Christmas light displays are done professionally, & they tend to evolve each year in an unspoken effort to outdo each other.



My mother grew up in this still very Italian section of Brooklyn.

I got to the the lights with her this year.



Many families collect money for charity when the crowds come to see the lights.



This house belongs to Alfred Polizzotto (1145 84th St.), who had a mechanical designer rig 29-foot-high toy soldiers to stand guard, waving their arms. Polizzotto also has 2,000-pound horses rearing and galloping, & a quartet of dancers almost 10 feet tall pirouetting in a massive ode to "The Nutcracker Suite." Polizzotto, a real estate lawyer & cancer survivor who got seriously involved in the Christmas madness to thank God for his illness' remission, estimates that the block draws 150,000 visitors a year (it's that much of a spectacle...I had to look it up).






I don't know why...but between all the Christmas lights & statues of Mary there seem to be lots of fountains...this one came complete with Koi fish & a closed circuit TV camera so that no one 'bothered' the fish.

This really has to be seen to believed.

Labels: Holidays, NYC, Photos