Ron Glotz has been keeping the family tradition alive for decades.

“I’ve always had the Christmas bug,” Glotz said.

“A long time ago, my dad started decorating his house,” Glotz said. “He really enjoyed it.”

“He always wanted to add onto it and had a lot of ideas,” he said. One of the things he envisioned, but didn’t finish was having a lighted arch over his driveway.

Times Observer photo by Brian Ferry Decorations light up properties on Cider Mill Hill in Russell.

His father passed away in 1998. “The year before, he said, ‘I hope you guys can keep doing it,'” Glotz said.

Not only has he kept it going, he continually grows the project.

“Every year I just keep adding more and more to it,” he said. “I try to find things that other people don’t have. I’m the strange person that, in the middle of summer, is getting Christmas stuff delivered to my house.”

There are at least 150 individual decorations in the display. Most of them feature LED lights, so the electric bill doesn’t take much of a hit in December.

In 2014, Glotz’s mother passed away. “My sister Donna made the sign” prominently located in the middle of the property that says, “In memory of Carl and Millie Glotz. Your lights will forever shine.”

“I didn’t want anyone to forget about them,” Glotz said. “Whenever someone looks at it, I want them to think of them.”

It’s not a matter of buying up decorations and taking up space.

“I try to make it classy-looking and not just more and more in one spot,” Glotz said. “I have all the characters from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer in one area.”

“I have a lot of Santa Clauses,” he said. “I try to space them out.”

In general, Glotz tries to make the decorations make sense as much as possible — “if they came to life, that’s what they’d be doing.”

Some of the decorations have particular meaning to the Glotz family and others.

“I have a really old, plywood Santa Claus from a person I worked for in the past who passed away,” Glotz said. “His daughter gave to me. She really wanted to see it used again.”

Artist Joanne Oviatt, Glotz’s cousin, restored that decoration. “She really made it look nice,” he said.

“My mother-in-law passed away a few years ago,” Glotz said. “My sisters and brother got together and got a lighted ‘Joy’ sign for my wife. They wanted to get her something that was meaningful.”

Jeff Bartsch, who has his own major display on Central Avenue in Warren, provided one piece of Glotz’s. “The deer that I have up that look like they’re flying – they are there thanks to Jeff Bartsch,” he said.

“Some of my nativity scene… my cousin gave to me,” he said. “When her father passed away, she wanted to give it to me so that she could see that it was still being used.”

There is also an arch over the driveway.

“That’s a little tribute to my dad,” Glotz said. “That’s something he always wanted to do, but didn’t really know how.”

Glotz enlisted the help of a friend who is a welder to create the structure.

The lights are out of storage and set up as soon as possible after Halloween — which means Thanksgiving or so. They remain in place through New Years Day, Glotz said.

“I do appreciate the help from my wife and my boys in getting them down from the attic,” Glotz said. “That’s the hardest part.”

In addition to 150 or so decorations, there is more than a half-mile of cable snaking around the property feeding power to those lights. “It’s a lot of extension cords,” he said.

While there is a memorial aspect to the display, the primary function is making spirits bright.

“The thought of making kids smile is why I do it,” Glotz said.

Early on, he explained that to family.

“Within five minutes of telling my sister that I do it because I love to make kids happy, I could hear kids say, look, there’s Santa Claus,” he said. “I want to put smiles on people’s faces. I have a lot of people that tell me they family that come back from all over the country and one of their favorite things.”

Another time, “I could hear the kids say, ‘Does Santa Claus live there?'”

The Glotz house is 1.2 miles from the Russell end Cider Mill.

The characters can be seen in daylight. A timer turns on the lights at 5 p.m. each day and turns them off again at 10 p.m.

It’s certainly not the only decorated property on the road.

“Every year, I see more and more,” Glotz said. “I think Cider Mill is one of the nicer decorated roads around. You’ll see a lot of nice lights on the way. But, when you see it, you’ll know.”