Thousands visit this woman’s wild Christmas lights display
Her Brooklyn home is lit.
After Lucy Spata moved to the Dyker Heights neighborhood in the fall of 1986, she was shocked when December rolled around. “It was quiet. Not even a [decorative] light on the block,” Spata told The Post. “I said, ‘This is not right.’ ”
Back in Bensonhurst, her family’s home had always been festively decorated come the holidays. So she put a big, bright snowflake on top of her new home, as well as a couple of colorful soldiers out front.
More than three decades later, her area is now the borough’s premier destination for Christmas cheer, with some 25 houses — spanning 11th and 12th avenues between 86th and 81st streets — decking their façades annually. (“It took a while” for the neighbors to catch on, Spata said. “Now everybody is really involved.”)
Approximately 300,000 people visit each year, according to Tony Muia, who operates a guided-bus tour of the neighborhood, and vendors hawk hot chocolate and cider to the crowds.
“We had a whole group that just came because they saw [my] house on their TV in Italy,” said Spata, who operates two Lucy’s Italian food trucks.
This year, her display includes two huge soldiers, a chorus of angels on the stairs, snowmen lining the garage, snowflakes (including the original one) covering the home’s exterior and lights everywhere. Spata has no space at home to keep the hundreds of decorations she’s accumulated, so she rents a dedicated storage space in the off-season. “I have so many [items], it’s hard to count,” she said.
“Every year I add like one or two more pieces. There’s no more room, really, but if I see something I like, I squeeze it in.”
It takes Spata and three hired helpers four weeks to put up the display each year. Her husband, Angelo, 71, a former butcher, used to help but now “supervises,” she said, as his health has declined over the years. (The Spatas have two children — including Angelo Spata Jr., a reputed member of the Colombo crime family who was sentenced to 15 months in prison in 2014 on racketeering and gambling raps — and five grandchildren.)
The inside of Spata’s 84th Street home is just as over-the-top, with nearly every room decked with angels, bows, garlands, Santas of all sizes and a slew of densely ornamented Christmas trees.
She said her electric bill runs under $700 per month-long season. “They’re not on steady,” she explained of the LED lights, which are on timers. “People want to [donate to the cost], but I won’t accept it.”
In recent years, there’s been some controversy over the sheer number of fans who flock to Dyker Heights during the holidays. Police are needed to direct traffic nightly around the area, which Spata admitted “gets pretty mobbed.”
Litter and noise have become bigger issues as more tourists flock to the lights, and there has also been an uproar over parking, which has controversially been reserved for tour buses along certain stretches in past years. The Dyker Heights Civic Association is seeking a community board “crackdown on homeowners who lease space in their driveways to the food vendors in violation of city health regulations,” according to the Brooklyn Eagle.
But no controversy nor crowd can break Spata’s Christmas spirit.
“My God, it’s worth everything,” she said of the way visiting kids look at the decorations every year. “[The neighborhood] is used to it by now; 30 days out of the year means nothing. I do it for children and my mother’s memory — and for me, ’cause I’m a kid at heart.”