Lit From Within Energy – lots of it – keeps the spirit of the season aglow at a traffic-halting home in Orland

When Aubrey Ayer was a boy growing up in Orland, his family never put up outdoor holiday lights. They had Christmas, but it was a small, quiet, country event.

These days, Christmas is an electric event in his household – literally. He and his wife Linda have 38,000 lights on their lawn near the town office during Christmas.

“It’s my favorite holiday,” Aubrey said. He and Linda were sitting in the kitchen at their house, which is just across the street from the one where Aubrey grew up. With smiles and twinkling eyes, Aubrey recalled the years it snowed on Christmas Eve. At those times, his father, who worked for the state, stayed out all night plowing the roads. Aubrey would wake up early and sit at the window waiting to catch a glimpse of his father. “Here he comes! Here he comes!” the youngster would call out when the man came into view. Then, the family would open gifts – you can just imagine the warmth – and Aubrey’s father would head back out for more winter work.

“That sounds sad to a lot of people, but it was great for me,” said Aubrey. “I didn’t know it at the time, but I was poor. I didn’t know it because we had everything we needed.”

Linda shook her head with understanding. “My family was poor when I was growing up, but it seemed like we always got what we asked for at Christmas,” she added.

When the Ayers put out their annual decorations – they have had as many as 50,000 lights – it is a public expression of the richness with which they remember the spirit of their childhood holidays. There are angels, choirs, gingerbread people, Santa and Mrs. Santa, elves, reindeer, Disney characters, candy canes, polar bears and the Baby Jesus.

“I’m trying to have people remember it the way I remember it,” said Aubrey. “I’m trying to share with the world today what I felt as a young fellow. No worries in life. No stress. A very simple, happy life. I don’t know if it was like that for everybody in the world. But for me it was a wonderful, wonderful time.”

Although their work delights strangers, neighbors and their own three children and grandchildren, the Ayers say they put out the lights for themselves. They are not religious. They are not extravagant in their tastes. They simply love the magic of the holiday.

Back in 1972, they began the tradition for their firstborn child with a snowman placed outside the trailer they were living in at the time. The next year, they moved to the house where they still live today and added a few snowmen and a Santa. This year, nearly 100 items adorn the lawn, none of them the contemporary inflatable types. Indeed, the Ayers lawn is one place where time seems to stop, where the spirit of Christmas Past comes alive for anyone over 40, and introduces a less complicated form of imagery to the under-30 computer generation and the under-10 believers with visions of sugarplums.

It’s enough to stop traffic, beep horns, attract tour buses and inspire passers-by to leave notes. “Boy you sure can decorate. Shoulda brought my camera,” the dishwasher repairman wrote on a receipt he left behind after servicing an appliance.

“That’s not what I do it for,” said Aubrey, who works in the maintenance department at the mill in Bucksport. (His co-workers bring their children and grandchildren to see the holiday village.) “We work on it for months. Our kids, especially the daughters, always said that it was like a winter wonderland.”

“But we do it for us,” said Linda.

“I’m a kid at heart,” said Aubrey.

“We both are,” said Linda. “We love Christmas.”

They also love Halloween. At that time of year, the Ayers, who met in high school in Bucksport, also cover their lawn with symbols of the season: cats, witches, ghosts and a digital sign with the read-out, “Boo.” More than 100 costumed children stop by each year for candy and a surprise scare from Aubrey, who has become an expert at jumping from hiding places in the garage.

The same two-car garage used to be a storage place for all the outdoor decorations but that left no room for anything else, including the cars. In their travels from Maine to Florida, the Ayers have collected enough items to outgrow the storage space – and nearly outgrow their yard. More than a dozen “scenics” make up this year’s display.

And that doesn’t even account for the indoor decorations. The Ayers have four Christmas trees and, driving by their house during the day when the lights are off, you can see into a bay window so stuffed with holiday decorations that it seems only natural for the pieces to spill onto the lawn.

Linda said she is quick and artistic and that Aubrey is slow and methodical. He plans. She shoots from the hip. But in the end, said Aubrey, “We’re fortunate that we think a lot alike.” “We’re kind of inseparable,” said Linda. “Where you see one, you see the other. That’s why I got married. He’s my best friend.” She paused. “The older you get, the happier you get.”

Last month, the Ayers celebrated their 34th wedding anniversary, made all the more important because of health problems Linda developed two years ago that affect her day-to-day comfort. She doesn’t like to talk about her health except to say that she treasures every day. Two years ago, after working 27 years at a bank in Bangor, she retired to take better care of herself. Still, she spent several hours a day in November stringing lights and planning the layout for this year’s display. When she had to go to Boston to the hospital around Halloween, her children took over and organized the holiday in their parents’ absence.

The electric bill triples, from Dec. 1, when the Christmas lights go on, until Jan. 1, when the lights come down. But it’s worth it, says Aubrey.

“I don’t want to see the season end. It comes so quickly and leaves so quickly,” he said.

Talking to the Ayers, however, you get the feeling that the spirit of Christmas doesn’t go away at the end of the season.

“We have almost as much fun just the two of us on Christmas morning as we did when we had the kids,” said Aubrey. They open gifts from others in the morning under the tree upstairs. At night, after visiting with their children, they open their gifts alone together under the Disney-themed tree in the basement.

“Do I believe in Santa Claus?” posed Aubrey. “I’m 56-years old and, yes, I do.”

Alicia Anstead can be reached at 990-8266 and aanstead@bangordailynews.net.

A bright blue star hangs from a tree above a creche.

Of the elaborate display, Aubrey Ayer says, “I’m trying to share with the world today what I felt as a young fellow.”