Christmas DDIY: Let someone else decorate

South Jerseyans basked in the sun over the past few weeks, enjoying unseasonably warm temperatures and, if they had any foresight,  taking the opportunity to hang Christmas lights.

The real smarties — and the ones with disposable income — hired someone else to do it for them.

Holiday happenings in downtown districts

Award-winning designers in the region will drag out 32-foot ladders and miles of their own assorted lights, complete with timers and multi-plugs to create illusions of frostiness.

You can pick the colors. Will they burn constantly, or leap, or twinkle or run? Are you tired of the clear whites you dressed your trees in for the past five years and want to go back to traditional colors? Do you want to give each of your children his or her own tree to highlight in purple or yellow?

Choose from a splendiferous display or one that's toned down but suitably sparkly. Each job is different.

Whatever the price tag, it includes the dreaded take-down and storage.

One of the busiest Christmas decorators around is Neill Parker of Haddon Township, who has been brightening up trees for about 15 years. His business, Designs of Distinction, began with landscaping, and then a neighbor asked if he would install her lights. That led to another customer, and another.

From landscaping to lights

“The first had a mansion in Haddonfield, on Chews Landing Road. I put on a lot of lights, and it really stood out. Eventually I was doing six or seven along that road. At the time, no one was specializing in installing lights. If you wanted it done and couldn't do it yourself, you called an electrician,” said Parker. This year, as in the past, he “turned on” Haddonfield's Christmas tree, at Library Point, where Haddon Avenue and Tanner Street intersect. He's also dressed Kings Court off Kings Highway.

Parker calls on his son, Justin, to help during the seasonal rush and may hire some temporary workers. He's given up on using a boom truck because much of his work involves large trees. “The truck just took more time. I had to keep moving it. Now I use ladders, and I climb up, and sometimes into, the tree,” said Parker, who sometimes mixes his own lights with those of his clients.

“I have tubs of them,” said Parker, who has done holiday street lighting for Haddonfield, Collingswood, Barrington and Pitman and also decorates the lobby of Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Camden.

Much of his work involves wrapping pine rope with lights. “More and more people are decorating their doors with that, or the columns in front of large houses. That really pulls your eye to the front and makes it inviting,” he said.

And most of it is what he describes as “ageless and classic. Bright white.”

“When people are young, they can't afford to pay someone to do it, and if they have young children, it can be a family thing. No one, absolutely no one, likes taking them down, rolling them up,” said Parker.

No one wants to test them before they go up either, he said, and that's one of the first steps he takes, replacing the burned-out bulbs before he begins the job.

Because much of his work is close to his home, Parker tries to drive by his work almost nightly, looking for gaps either from bulbs that have gone out or branches that have blown out of place.

Checking it twice

“Sometimes a string goes out, and maybe the owner doesn't notice, but I do,” he said, adding he has sometimes stopped on the way to a holiday event and jumped out of his car to check for a disconnected line or a blown circuit.

“Landscapers will run over the lines sometimes, or the squirrels get to them,” he said.

This season, Parker was dressing up two houses a day, so long as it wasn't windy. “You can't be up a ladder when the wind is blowing 30 or 40 miles an hour. It will knock the ladder right out from under me.”

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Homeowners don't have to be around when Parker's working. “After all these years, I know where every outlet is. The lights are on timers, and it's up to the owner when he wants them on.

“People doing entertaining, even as early as Thanksgiving, want to be able to welcome people with lights,” he said.

He doesn't suggest leaving the strands of lights up after the holiday season. If they're wrapped around trees, they can damage the bark, and squirrels will chew into them, pulling out the copper lines for their nests along with plastic sheeting.

For new customers, Parker has to assess the electric supply. “You can't plug in 14 strands of lights if you're operating with a fuse box.”

“Everyone has a budget. It could be $400 or $800. If I'm wrapping trees, I charge by the tree. I could put 8,000 lights on one tree,” said Parker.

No one complains to him about the cost of electricity, he said. “It's just one more Christmas present, a present for the neighborhood.”

Festive and fancy

From his studio on Second Avenue in Haddon Heights, florist Christopher Volz creates wreaths, topiaries, garlands and window swags from live greens and builds large, elegant papier-mâché creations with his sister and business partner, Ann Marie. In the past they have shaped a massive teacup for a focal point and this year will add life-size ice skaters to a display for their own holiday party.

One of his favorite works was a huge birdhouse with a giant red cardinal.

Volz is often tapped to design centerpieces for holiday house tours in Haddonfield and Haddon Heights, and the pair's Nativity backgrounds are sold for both retailers and households.

Volz, who operated flower shops at two locations in Cherry Hill for 22 years, is always on the lookout for anything that shimmers. He has made window-length strands of rhinestones and antique chandelier crystals that sparkle in the winter light.

One of his favorite concepts is to tightly wrap an Alberta spruce in blue lights and top it with blinking white lights. “It looks like a snow-topped blue mountain,' he said.

Volz uses his own equipment and supplies. “I don't like to dig through other people's stuff,” he said.

It's too late to call on Volz for major residential displays this year, he said, because he starts booking his design service in September and designs landscapes and accents for special events.

Matt Schell of Collingwood, an elementary school teacher in Camden, and a friend, Mark Johnson, who teaches in Haddon Heights, have been installing outdoor Christmas lights for six years and are still accepting new customers.

“I was working a few years ago to install gutters, and someone asked if I would do lawn cleanup. Then we started installing lights. We'll do pretty much what anyone wants. We'll wrap trees and bushes, or use our lights or yours.

“I think someone calls me because they just reach a point and say, 'I'm not doing this anymore.'  We're still doing a lot of icicle lights on the roofline,” said Schell.

Some opt for simple

Florist Michael Bruce, twice winner of the Best in Show category at the Philadelphia International Flower Show, laughs at the idea of climbing trees to install lights.

“The idea of hiring a decorator for the holiday hasn't been as popular since the economy dived. It's expensive, and people think, 'Oh, I can do that myself.' Well, even with all the posts on Pinterest, they usually can't,” he said. After owning shops on Haddon Avenue in both Westmont and Collingswood, Bruce now is based in a Pennsauken industrial park.

Big changes at the Moorestown Mall

But Bruce loves the Christmas holiday, and one of the most popular displays at his Haddon Township home is a sideboard covered with old children's toys. “My brothers were seven and 10 years older than myself, so I have a lot of them,” he said. The collection grows from friends who spot interesting old toys at yard sales.

“It's charming. It's old-timey,” he said.

During the winter, his front door is decorated with old sleigh bells on leather straps. “That may stay up until early spring, and we have a bowl where we display noisemakers from New Year's Eve.” Some of them have come from rummage and yard sales and others, he admits, from trash-picking.

“It's not so much about Christmas as it is about the winter holiday. Candles always work. Float a candle in any container that you can use to submerge a flower. Just look at things a little differently,” said Bruce.

For more information

Christopher Volz's work can be seen online at www.hareandthehedgerow.com. Call (609) 828-1490.

Matt Schell of Collingswood: Call (856) 982-2767.

Neill Parker and his company, Designs of Distinction: Call (856) 870-6945.

Michael Bruce now has a business at 7025 Colonial Parkway, Pennsauken. Call (856) 375-1463 or (856) 854-6311 or visit www.michaelbruceflorist.com.

A history of Christmas lights

The idea of Christmas lights came from Germany in the 1500s and may have been started by Martin Luther, who reportedly was so awestruck by the night sky that he brought a tree into his home and wired on some lighted wax candles.

Before that, evergreen trees were a tradition for both pagans and Christians as a preview of approaching spring. They often were hung, upside down, from a ceiling bracket.

A community tree first was noted in Riga in Latvia in 1510, according to the website WHYZZ, which is geared to help parents answer children's questions.

Because of the danger of fire from lighted candles, Christmas trees usually were not put up in homes until Christmas Eve. Electric lights changed all that in the late 1800s, when Thomas Edison invented the light bulb. Edison's business partner, Edward Johnson, created a string of 80 red, white and blue lights and placed them on a tree in 1882. The company decorated the outside of its laboratory in Menlo Park with Christmas lights in 1880.

President Grover Cleveland ordered electric lights be added to the White House tree in 1895.

The NUMA electric company first sold colored lights for trees in 1917, but they were so expensive that many people rented them for the season. Bubble lights hit the market in 1946.

In December 2010, a Kiwanis club in Belgium decorated a tree with 194,672 lights, still the record.