Every December, it’s not hard to find Don and Nancy Moore’s Borough Road home.
Just follow the glow.
The Moores are the ones who put on that epic lights display in Penacook that is a must-see destination each holiday season.
And while you drive up to their yard and aww at the Christmas wonderland for a few minutes, the Moores spend many hours creating – and expanding upon – the show year after year.
The display was turned on for the first time this week, meaning Borough Road is going to see a lot more traffic over the next few weeks, but before Don Moore flipped the preverbial switch, we stopped by to see what it takes to pull this whole thing off.
It all started in mid-September when Moore would go into his two-car garage and start checking the lights. With between 30,000 and 40,000 lights, that’s a lot of plugging in to do.
Unless you count the summer months when the Moores would scour yard sales for cheap holiday finds.
All the lights and decorations are housed in the garage, pool house and two sheds behind the house, so it takes Moore a while to pull it all out and take stock of what he’s got, what’s new and what he needs.
But this year, Nov. 1 was the big day – when Moore actually started putting things out in the yard.
Since many days he doesn’t go to work till late morning, Moore will spend a few hours wrapping lights around props, putting up his PVC pipe trees or strategically placing Santas, candy canes and reindeer. If the weather cooperates, he’ll do stuff at night too.
“People always stop and ask when the lights are coming on,” Moore said.
And with all those lights, just think of all the extension cords.
“I probably have enough extension cords to go to Thirty Pines, which is a half mile away, and back,” Moore said.
This year, there’s been reinforcements in the form of family coming over to help for back-to-back weekends in November.
As if the display needed anything else, Moore added 40 blow molds he got for a great deal, a couple new 20-foot PVC trees and continued to upgrade the lights to LED, which now make up about 90 percent of the collection.
“You can run 10 sets of LEDs to one of the old incandescent,” he said.
Moore began his Christmas extravaganza in 1992, and back then, it was nowhere close to what it is today.
“It was a real small scale – in front of the house and on the garage,” Moore said.
But each year it grows a little bit.
“I’m going to keep going until I can’t do it anymore,” he said.
A few years back, he added music to the display, which includes songs like Frozen’s “Let It Go,” “Jingle Bell Rock,” as well as the Beach Boys and Trans-Siberian Orchestra, which can be heard within a couple hundred feet on either side of the house on the radio.
Just remember to stay in your car. There’s a lot of stuff in the Moore’s yard they want you to enjoy, but just at a safe distance.
The lights will be on display through a few days after Christmas, from 5 to 9:30 p.m. nightly. And when the holiday season is over, the display has been broken down in as little as a weekend, weather dependent of course.
“It comes down really quick,” Moore said. “If there’s snow it’s not fun. Some of the stuff stays out till spring.”
Now before you go rushing out the door to check out the display, here’s a little breakdown of the whole operation.
Number of years: 25
Time spent this year: More than a full work week
Space used: ¾ of an acre
Distance from back of yard to road: About 200 feet
Added cost to December’s electric bill: About $70
Radio station: 107.9
Number of songs: 12
Number of lights: 30,000 to 40,000
Styles of lights: C7, C9, M5, icicles
Strand lengths: 100 to 225 lights
PVC Trees: 40, 6 to 20 feet tall
Feet of PVC: More than 600
Natural trees: 4
Places to plug in: 7
Tomato cage trees: 40
Snowmen: 14
Santas: 7
Mrs. Claus: 2
Carolers: 7
Nutcrackers: 12
Elves: 8
Reindeer: 15
Bears: 8
Candy canes: 100
Merry Christmas signs: 1
Sleighs: 2
Original pieces: 1, a Santa sleigh with three reindeer
Miscellaneous: 1, four-car train, 1 workshop, a coach and horse.
