Buffalo Grove family takes 'Festival of Lights' to heart
Drive along Beechwood Road, a winding residential street in Buffalo Grove, and you will see houses bedecked in lights and surrounded by Christmas decorations, as one might expect this time of year.
Take a closer look and you will find one house, hiding in plain sight, radiating a different kind of holiday cheer.
Like its neighbors, the house is festooned with lights, some even climbing the pole of a basketball hoop like vines.
But the inflatable snowman that welcomes visitors holds a sign reading not "Merry Christmas" or "Season's Greetings," but a hearty "Happy Hanukkah."
There's also a dog decorated with a Star of David, a polar bear holding a dreidel, gift packages illuminated with blue and white lights, and a projected display of dreidels bouncing up and down.
While such lavish Hanukkah spectacles are a rarity in a sea of Christmas displays, it's become a "festival of lights" tradition for Steven and Maureen Clay. The couple first created the display a decade ago for Hanukkah, which this year begins at sundown Tuesday.
"When my kids were little, everybody around the neighborhood was Catholic and put up all the Christmas lights," Steven Clay said. "And I said, 'Why can't I put up blue and white lights?'"
The effort takes several hours, but it's all in a day's work for Steven Clay, who is an electrician by trade. He starts around Halloween to take advantage of the warmer weather and every year adds a little more.
The scene has become a destination for friends and family members, and is popular among the Clays' Buffalo Grove neighbors.
While the couple's children are now in high school and college, they make sure their dad keeps the tradition going.
"My kids got older and I told my kids I didn't want to do it anymore," he said. "And they said, 'You have to. There are people in the neighborhood that ask me when you are starting to put it up.' So I do it more for my kids."
Maureen Clay said she's embraced the extravagant display in part because decorations like the inflatables and Happy Hanukkah signs weren't around when she was growing up.
"We're still children at heart," she said.
The display has even won over someone Maureen Clay feared wouldn't be a fan - her father.
"I was worried about what he might think at first," she said. "You grow up in a very religious household - I was borderline Orthodox - and this was not really the way it was. He loves it. He thinks it's great."