Throughout the holiday season, twinkling lights adorn the homes in many neighborhoods throughout Carlsbad. However, as the holiday season comes to a close, the festive decorations must come down.

Ammonite Place, located in Carlsbad, is no stranger to this task. Its elaborate holiday display included thousands of lights during the festive season. Throughout this period, it was a community centerpoint for the festive feeling of the season.

But now that the holidays are over, the families that put up these displays are facing the daunting task of taking down all of their decorations. It can be a bittersweet time for many as the lights are lit for the final time on New Year’s Eve. In the days following, the decorations are quickly and efficiently taken off the homes.

Ron Smith, a long-time resident of Ammonite Court, helps this close-knit neighborhood community take down the decorations

that encompass the entirety of their street.

“The weekend after New Year’s Day is when [the decorations] are completely down,” says Smith. 

Although taking down the lights can be difficult, it is often regarded as one of the easier parts of their festivities.

“I can get my house done on a weekend,” Smith exclaims. “It’s way easier coming down than up.” 

However, taking down all of these decorations does not come without its own set of challenges. 

“Cutting all of the zip ties,” Smith notes as the hardest part of the tear-down process. “Everything you see is held together by zip ties,” he concluded.

However, the end of the holiday season is not the only time when decorations have to be taken down. Sometimes, unexpected issues can lead to impromptu teardowns of these decorations in order to prevent damage.

“If it’s raining heavily some lights have an issue and we have to reset them, or bad wind storms, we have some challenges there,” Smith’s wife explains. “You learn from it. We’re becoming more resilient to it.” 

As the season truly draws to a close, the lights are taken off the lawns and roofs of houses throughout this street. They are put to rest in various ways, but the Smith family boasts about their special way of storing the lights.

“We’ve gotten pretty good at condensing them,” Smith said. “We just had to build out attic space where we can store them, and it condenses down into pretty small areas. We have most of the bins and the storage up in the attic there, and the roof, we have two attics we put it in.”

As for his neighbors, Smith states that “most people have various methods.”

Taking down these elaborate displays requires effort from the entire neighborhood, and the owners of the houses on Ammonite Court are no stranger to this collaboration.

“We all get together and we have a good time,” Jillian, a resident of this street, said. “We have a good time together and do it.” 

Although the Ammonite light display may be over for this year, it is clear that the lights will still come out of hibernation every holiday season for many years to come.