EAST HELENA — This time of year you can see the glow from the Vukonich house at 3167 Stillwell Drive from about a mile away. For 15 years the Vukonich family has built a holiday light show at their East Helena Valley home for others to enjoy.
The display is made up of about 20-thousand individual LED light bulbs, and getting it all up and running takes a whole lot of work.
“It’s in the hundreds of hours,” display creator Ben Vukonich said.
Ben saw some Christmas light shows on YouTube more than 15 years ago, and decided he wanted to try building his own. As his son, Matty Vukonich explains, Ben learned some electrical engineering to create a light display that blinks and changes colors in sync with music that viewers can play over their car radios.
“He engineers a lot of the stuff,” Matty said. “A lot of the panels and boxes, he has to do that all himself.”
Planning for the annual holiday light display is a year-round process.
“I’ve already started planning for next year,” Ben said.
The production is truly a family affair. Ben does the planning and programming, his older son and wife help with set up, and even though Matty has moved away from his childhood home, you can still hear his voice in the audio that goes along with the display.
“We’ve been using the same voice lines for over 10 years,” Matty said. “So you’ll hear me as a 13-year-old and you’ll hear me record a voice line from a year ago, and it’ll be completely different.”
All the time planning, programming, and building is worth it when the Vukonich family sees cars lined up to enjoy the light show.
“It’s just fun to be part of people’s celebration,” Ben said. “We enjoy the fact that people include us in their plans for Christmas Eve and whenever. It’s a fun thing to share with Helena.”
The light display goes up right after Thanksgiving each year, and runs through New Years. Lights are on from 5:30-9:30pm on weeknights, and 5:30pm-10:30pm on weekends. Ben said most people visit the display on Christmas Eve, so they keep the lights on until about 11pm that night. The Vukonich family asks that people stay in their cars when viewing the display for their own safety.
