Red and green string lights illuminate the yard of 3629 Southwestern as visitors pass by to see the infamous Santa house, which has now become a quintessential part of the town’s holiday festivities.
The home’s owner Wayne Smith has been a resident of University Park for over 40 years, and has observed how holiday decorating trends have changed since his arrival.
“People started hiring companies to have their houses lit up, which I think is great and cool, but I wanted something different, ” Smith said. “I remembered all the old plastic Santas from the 1950s, so I started collecting them.”
Setup begins right before Thanksgiving but by himself can take up to two weeks without any help.
“It was late November and some of the neighbors were asking, you know, why isn’t the Santa House going up?” neighbor Stroud Arthur said.
This concern prompted Arthur to reach out to Smith, who had suffered from a stroke 4 years prior. Arthur offered the assistance of local Boy Scout Troop 82 to help Smith and his family with the complicated set up process.
“What we do is the Boy Scouts bring all the santas out of my backyard and up to the front,” Smith said. “We secure the bases, and I build like these wood bleachers to put them on, almost like a stadium in my front yard.”
However, the display was not always this organized. Over the last 10 years, Smith has adjusted his methods to make room for his growing collection. Beyond adding wooden supports, the lawn has been equipped with security cameras and a makeshift fence to prevent teenagers from rummaging through the antiques like in years past.
Although Smith is known for his vintage christmas decor his collection spans well beyond that, including a variety of items, like vintage cowboy boots, arcade games, old advertisements, gas pumps and antique guitars.
“A lot of people joke, since my last name’s Smith, they call me Smithsonian because I have so many antiques,” Smith said.
While the volume of Christmas paraphernalia may lead one to believe the house serves as nothing more than a storage facility, that couldn’t be farther from the truth.
“My kids used to not like it. It used to be embarrassing to have so many people stopping by the house,” Smith said. “Plus, they didn’t like the fact that it makes it hard to back out of the driveway.”
On high traffic nights Smith can often be found sitting alongside the display in a lawn chair interacting with visitors. Some of his favorite holiday experiences come from this time spent sharing memories with those who pass by.
“Two years ago I met a nice lady from a retirement home who told me that her husband had been coming for several years,” Smith said. “The last thing she told her husband, as he was about to die, was that she would make sure she came by the Christmas house in his honor.”
The home gets on average three to five thousand visitors each weekend night who come to tour Dallas’s most extravagant holiday decorations.
“Starting around December 10th we get people renting these huge buses, kind of like the ones we use for the dances, and they go and take a group to go look at the lights,” junior Caroline Ethridge said.
As expected, the “Santa house” is a mandatory stop for each of these buses, greatly impacting the holiday traffic on the 3900 block of southwestern. On the rare occasion that neighbors complain about the disruption Smith’s response remains the same each time.
“I usually do a couple of television interviews, and I’ve told them; ‘Look, if you want to complain I’ll have this news crew down here and you can tell them that you’re the Grinch of our street,’” Smith said.
Making this display function each year is a community effort. The University Park Police Department turns the street into a one way during the evenings, offering a police presence to keep viewers safe. Contributions from neighboring families ensure that this tradition will continue for years to come.
“My oldest son dressed up in a Santa suit one year and actually two years in a row and stood out there for the little kids that think it’s a real Santa,” Arthur said.
While most turn off Christmas lights during the late hours, the Santa house stays lit all night to prevent any circuit malfunctions that may occur due to the influx of power usage.
“I don’t think the lighting bothers anybody, if you look around at night, there’s Christmas lights everywhere,” Arthur said.
The extravagant decorations add an extra 1000 dollars to his electric bill each month, but that is no issue because of the joy Smith’s passion project brings the community.
“That’s really what makes it worthwhile for me. If it makes somebody happy then I’ve done my job,” Smith said.
