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Goodwill, glitz and the odd Grinch are found amid the Christmas lights
KEY POINTS:
Tiny tots with their eyes all aglow, strangers smiling and nodding - it's a feelgood festival of sparkle along Franklin Rd, Ponsonby, every Christmas.
For the 14th year in a row, the residents of this inner-Auckland boulevard have flicked the switch, illuminating the elaborate displays of tinsel and reindeer and turning the normally busy street into a twinkling traffic jam.
It's a lovely scene; every evening for the next month the street will be thronged by enchanted kids in their dressing gowns, getting more excited about the present-fest to come.
The lightshow is a gift from the residents of Franklin Rd to the people of Auckland - they don't accept any commercial sponsorship (apart from a small power-bill discount granted by an electricity company several years ago), don't allow any commerce or retail on the street apart from a few buskers and a coffee-van (which, in Ponsonby, is deemed an essential service) and, in fact, spend quite a bit of their own cash throwing the party.
Along the way, they've learnt that when you create goodwill, you also create risk - and expectation.
At Roscoe Thorby's house, the sheer glimmer of 40,000 tiny lightbulbs expresses everything nice about Christmas. "It's our free gift to the people of Auckland," he says.
Thorby, who owns a chandelier business, started the phenomenon when he decided to do a light display on his own house in 1993.
The following year, he invited a few neighbours to do the same and turned it into a street party. Before long, it was an annual bash.
"After a couple of years I thought 'this is working quite well,' so I started going around the neighbours and pushing it. They could see that it was fun, and it evolved into something else after a while - because as soon as you see the traffic and the people and their reactions, it gives you a warm, fuzzy feeling."
New resident Bill Ralston is convinced he and wife Janet Wilson will have the "gayest house on the street" for this, their first Franklin Rd Christmas.
They moved into the street this year and the gay couple who sold them the property promised to leave their lights - a hoard, says Ralston, that includes several thousand bulbs, several miles of shiny gold bunting and a dozen gold angels.
"It's all very high camp," Ralston says.
"When we first looked at the house, we said to each other 'oh dear, we're going to have to do the lights,' but the real estate agent assured us the vendors would leave behind their collection. If it's not up to scratch I'm going to have to spend some more money getting something more spectacular for next year."
Ralston has given up on the idea of using his car on December evenings.
"I think I'll just take taxis or walk." At the lighting-up ceremony, there were sausages sizzling, coffee and hot chocolate on sale and a jazz band performing. Outside number 29A, a cappella group Musica Sacra sang carols, much to the delight of householder Mary Whaley.
Like several other residents, Whaley pays a lighting consultant to help set up her display - mainly because her two-storey house is too tall and cumbersome to clamber over.
"You don't have to participate, but it's just fantastic that the community does do it. It's a great contribution to the people of Auckland. There's no pressure. There are some people who don't do it, and I think it's unfortunate for the rest of us and I don't really understand why they don't - it doesn't have to be expensive and it's just a little thing. Some people just like to be different, I guess."
The baby Jesus was stolen one year, along with his attendant camels. Another time, some party-pooper cut the lights (literally) with a pair of garden shears. The gift of light, it seems, isn't always gratefully received.
Passing revellers have no hesitation in letting householders know if their displays don't live up to expectations, standing outside insufficiently bright houses and making derogatory remarks loudly enough for the residents inside to get the message.
On the handwritten note shoved into Charlotte White's letterbox one year was a score: "1/10". White was only renting on the street and, she admits, hadn't gone to quite as much effort as the flasher households who set the night ablaze further up the hill, but it still felt a bit mean.
"We had heard when we moved into Franklin Rd that you basically get ostracised from the community if you don't make an effort - and we wanted to contribute anyway. We went to The Warehouse and bought some lights, and hung them up from the balcony. We had no idea we'd be graded on our effort."
At the time, White thought the note might be from an unimpressed neighbour but she concedes it could have been a pedestrian with high standards.
There's no pressure from other residents to get involved, says Thorby.
He visits new arrivals to the street, letting them know about the tradition and about the discounts offered by a commercial lighting company he has worked with in the past.
He also offers to lend lights to people who are renting. Thorby's proud to admit he encourages everyone to get involved but says he's never applied pressure.
"People do what they want to do; flatters will often come up with their own ideas that aren't too expensive, like shining a big spotlight on the house. That's cool, it's something. If anyone feels pressured, it's pressure they put on themselves."
The cost varies from house to house - Thorby's power bill goes up about $70 in December, but that cost also includes the coffee machine, chugging away out the front.
He says the average power bill would go up by less than $10 for the month and the larger cost for many is in choosing to purchase displays - like the two light-curtains he owns, worth $1000 each.
"You can get a set of lights for $20 if you want. Everyone spends what they can afford."
And what about the carbon footprint? Industrial lights use less energy than domestic twinklers, says Thorby, who is also trying some solar-powered lights this year.
There's only one forbidden activity - allowing commercial sponsorship of your display, like the house that once established a display appearing to promote a vodka brand, featuring drunken reindeer and a sozzled Santa.
"We don't approve of sponsorship of people's lights," says art critic Hamish Keith, a resident since 2001.
"We just want it to be a gift from the residents of Franklin Rd to the people of Auckland."
Keith and his wife, film costumier Ngila Dickson, had only been living on Franklin Rd a short while when Thorby came knocking.
"I walked out the front gate and there's Ross lurking and he said: 'Do you want me to put a sign on your gate saying 'Santa doesn't live here any more?'," recalls Keith.
It turned out the previous occupant had always played Santa, sitting up on the verandah.
"Ross said 'surely you won't want to be Santa?' and I looked at my wall, which had never been tagged and thought perhaps there may be some point in being Santa."
For the following five years, Keith donned the white beard and red suit and spent his December evenings ho-ho-hoing his way up and down the street, handing out lollipops donated by the nearby New World supermarket.
It's been an exercise in suppressing his inner Scrooge, says Keith, who has now handed over Santa duties to another neighbour, Gavin White.
"I hate what it costs. I hate putting [the lights] up. I dread the whole thing - but the minute you hear a kid saying 'woo, look at that, Mummy!' you suddenly realise why you do it. I go to bed and listen to kids out on the street and think 'wow, those kids are having a wonderful time'."
That's why the non-sponsored nature of Franklin Rd is so important, Keith says.
"There is no commercial aspect at all. If there were, I would take my lights down. We say 'no, this is one part of Christmas where you can take your children and you won't be badgered to buy anything'."
You might not be badgered, but you might be run over - that's the worry of Franklin Rd residents. It's the combination of darkness, traffic and excited children - all fuelled by lollipops and hot chocolate - that keeps Thorby awake at night.
"One day there will be a terrible accident," he says.
"Our big concern is the number of children we have on the street. The traffic is crawling up the road and you'll get some idiot with his foot on the accelerator driving up the median strip."
Repeated approaches to Auckland City Council haven't achieved much - the council said the residents would have to pay a private engineering firm to conduct a traffic management plan, which Thorby says was estimated at $15,000.
"Who do they think is going to pay for that?" Thorby says.
"We're giving this gift to the community of Auckland, why should we have to pay an extra cost as well?" asks Keith.
"I can't understand why the staff of the council feel that to provide safe traffic management is a reason to gouge the householders for more money. Is it going to take the death or serious injury of some child before they take action?"
The residents would like to see the road blocked off - or at least one-way - but in the meantime they're encouraging spectators to walk rather than drive.
Council operations manager Barry Williams says his team simply doesn't have the budget to manage traffic throughout December on Franklin Rd and says his inquiries to the Mayor's office about whether the council could find some extra funding have been declined.
"If the council had some funding we could arrange for the traffic management but that funding was not forthcoming," Williams says.
Another Auckland City spokeswoman, Michelle Roach, says the usual procedure is for people to apply for permission to hold an event and submit a traffic management plan for the council to approve.
"It's not our role to manage the safety of events people choose to have," she says. "We're there to quality control rather than to proactively put in place those measures."
*If battling the crowds and traffic aren't your idea of Christmas cheer, you can see the lights online at franklinroadlights.co.nz.
