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Hansen family tradition turns Dousman Street into a high-wattage Christmas destination

Kendra Meinert, Green Bay Press Gazette Dec 22, 2013.

Russ knows them so well he was secretly keeping track to see how long it would take a reporter to get to the most-asked few during an interview in the cozy living room of the Green Bay family's 100-year-old home they share with Eddie the dog, Betty the cat and a couple of hedgehogs. There's the Abominable Snowman, a family of flamingos, three blind mice, the Cat in the Hat, dinosaurs, SpongeBob SquarePants, giraffes, Grinch, geese, gators, Elmo, elephants, seals and oodles of others if, like most people do, you park your car, get out and take a closer look by strolling the sidewalk.

Once people realize Russ and Julia Hansen are the people who live in "that house on Dousman Street with all the Christmas lights," they get a lot of questions.

It's usually the same ones over and over again. In fact, Russ knows them so well he was secretly keeping track to see how long it would take a reporter to get to the most-asked few during an interview in the cozy living room of the Green Bay family's 100-year-old home they share with Eddie the dog, Betty the cat and a couple of hedgehogs.

Ten minutes in and the No. 1 question was on the holiday table.

"'Where do you store it?' Believe it or not, that's what people ask the most," Russ said.

For anyone who has ever driven by the Hansens' holiday house on the city's west side -- and that's undoubtedly a good chunk of the local population in the last decade or so -- it's a legitimate inquiry.

Their corner lot is not just decked with strings of lights, but it's also elbow-to-elbow illuminated figurines. We're talking a colorful delegation that far exceeds just your standard-issue snowmen, reindeer and elves. There's the Abominable Snowman, a family of flamingos, three blind mice, the Cat in the Hat, dinosaurs, SpongeBob SquarePants, giraffes,

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Grinch, geese, gators, Elmo, elephants, seals and oodles of others if, like most people do, you park your car, get out and take a closer look by strolling the sidewalk.

And that's not even counting all the Santas -- on a Ferris wheel, in an airplane, coming out of a pop-up camper, on the back of a bull ... The Hansens take that "This House Believes" sign by the door very seriously.

"We didn't want it to just be a pile of lights. We wanted it to be stuff you could look at," said Russ, who started the tradition at the address 14 years ago when he was still a bachelor.

Sometimes folks do so much looking there are fender benders, and occasionally police officers have had to help direct traffic.

It's a far cry from its more humble beginnings when it was a lot of lights in the big evergreens and handmade cutouts of reindeer and a sleigh.

"I look at some of those pictures and go, 'Oh, That's nothing.' But at the time it was a lot," he said.

It really took off when he met his wife and head elf, Julia, in 2000. They worked at the same place at the time, and he invited her to his annual party to celebrate the turning on of the display. She likes to joke that he "lured" her in with the lights.

"Now I had a helper to do all this, and that's when it started getting really good," he said.

Julia laughs that his mom's comment at the time was something along the lines of how "he found someone who is just as much of a fruitcake about decorating as he is."

But Julia came on board with one condition: She'd help with Christmas if Russ agreed that they could also decorate the yard for Halloween. That tradition nets the couple, married for 11 years, about 1,000 trick-or-treaters every Halloween. The spooky stuff -- witches, monsters, rolling fog machines -- all gets wiped out the day after Halloween so that the month-long process of Christmas decorating can begin. Russ insists he always has at least one holiday thing lit up the night after Halloween, kind of his signal to the neighborhood that preparation for the big spectacle is under way.

You might think this is the point in the story where Russ unrolls an elaborate blueprint of the layout showing exactly where everything will be staked, stapled, nailed or hung. Except no such thing exists.

"It's all right here," hes says, pointing to his head. "I know exactly what we're doing."

The Hansens' children, Hailey, 10, and Evan, 9, help to carry out the figurines and get a say in which ones go where. The family tries to come up with one new thing each year -- a feat that's becoming a challenge as they run out of space (although the next-door neighbor has generously offered her yard for expansion). This year's addition is Santa's tree lot.

There's never a question as to where a large nativity scene will go. It gets the most visible spot every year.

"The manger always goes on the front steps, because Christmas is Jesus' birthday," Julia said. "We're keeping Christ in Christmas. It's his birthday. That's the reason we celebrate Christmas."

The Hansens get a lot of compliments on the manger. They were saddened last year when someone stole the baby Jesus. In a stroke of good luck, Russ was able to find three of the vintage figurines this year. Baby Jesus is now secured in the manger, and Russ has two backups on reserve.

Which brings us back to the issue of storage.

"It's everywhere. It's everywhere," Russ said. "There's no one spot."

Decorations are tucked away in the attic, the garage, sheds and a lot of bins. All the trees get piled into the corner of the backyard over summer.

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"If anyone wanted to give us a free storage unit, we'd take it," Russ says.

He's constantly adding to the collection by scouring thrift stores for the old-fashioned items he's partial to, eBay and after-Christmas sales online. Sometimes, people drop off things in hopes the Hansens can give it a home, like the Grinch below the mailboxes and reindeer by the manger.

They spend every weekend from Halloween to Thanksgiving getting everything ready to light up by the first weekend of December. It's an operation that runs on 200 extension cords and 16 different timers. Russ meters everything to make sure circuits don't overload. They also plug into their upstairs renter's outlets and pay her December electric bill.

Second most popular question: How much does it cost to run the all those lights for five hours every day?

Julia says only that they're on the WPS budget plan, so their bill is the same year-round. And no, WPS doesn't give them a break on their bill -- another popular question.

"We don't really pay attention (to the cost)," Russ said. "If it was an issue, we wouldn't be doing it, is the way I look at it. If you spread it out over 12 months, it's not hardly much."

But a funny thing happened when the display started. Strangers began leaving donations in their mailbox to help cover the cost of the electricity, or they'd hand the family money when they were outside setting up. The Hansens' intention was never to do it for money, so they put a Salvation Army red kettle out in the yard. When that filled up too quickly, they built their own donation box and started partnering with Toys for Tots. Each year, they take the donations and, with the help of ace shoppers Hailey and Evan, go buy toys for the charity program. They bought 230 this year and more than 1,500 since they've started. Any donations that come in late in the season are saved for next season or used to buy toys for next year during after-Christmas sales.

"And guess what, it's more stuff we've got to store!" Russ said.

As much of a local tradition as the Hansens' house has become, there's still people who are convinced nobody really lives there. Russ and Julia sometimes hear people say that when they mingle anonymously outside and just listen to visitors' comments. Hailey once surprised a classmate who wondered who lived in "that house" by saying, "That's my house!"

As magical and whimsical as it is with the lights on, it is a significant amount of work. It means working outdoors in bitter cold and rain or passing up Packers games in November in order to get everything up. They try to get as much of it down in January, weather permitting, but some years cords are still frozen to the ground in March or April.

The neighbor across the intersection with the super-sized inflatable reindeer likes to holler over in the fall, "I've got mine up. What's taking you so long?" But he's right there to help the Hansens collect cords after the season.

People do tend to ask how in the heck they find the time to do such a big display. Russ tells them, "I have 24 hours a day just like everyone else. It's what you do with your time.

"It's fun, but you know many times when we're doing it we say, 'Why are we doing this?'" he said. " But now that it's done, it's a whole different story ... This is our Christmas card out there."

Julia, who has eight full-sized trees decorated in the house, has all kinds of ideas going forward. She'd love to find a business partner to match their Toys for Tots donation each year, and she wants to get a weatherproof registry outside to see where visitors are coming from.

She also thinks it would be fun to do Christmas in July some year, so that they don't have to battle the weather during setup. And hang on to your Santa hats, because she has another idea for simplifying things some year -- just put a single leg lamp from "A Christmas Story" in the window and nothing outside.

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"What would people do?" she asks. "You can't miss it, because you never know ..."

-- kmeinert@pressgazettemedia.com and follow her on Twitter @KendraMeinert.