San Francisco () - It's the most wonderful time of the year at the house on 3650 21st St. But not necessarily for its owners.
Each December for the past 22 years, Tom Taylor and Jerry Goldstein have transformed their San Francisco house into a Christmas village fit for giants. They rent a hydraulic boom truck to place the star on top of a 50-foot Norfolk Island Pine and pay a full-time staff of eight "elves" to hang beach-ball-size ornaments. They distribute 12,000 candy canes.
And they keep wondering why they're still doing this.
"It just got sort of carried away," says Mr. Taylor, 68 years old, who manages properties when he's not decorating his house for Christmas. "People just expect us to keep pulling a new bunny out of the hat," he says. This year, he added animatronic puppets.
Now Tom and Jerry's Christmas Tree, as it is known, is an institution. "I guess we had better keep on doing it, whether we like it or not,'" says Mr. Taylor.
Going crazy with Christmas lights is an American tradition. Less talked about is the difficulty some people have pulling the plug.
At Christmas, keeping up with the Joneses can get inside your head. Last year, a neighbor of Elizabeth Hansburg, 36, asked when she was going to hang her lights. "We don't have any," she replied. "I can help you with that," the neighbor said, before handing over a large box of Christmas lights; Ms. Hansburg's husband strung them.
The Christmas tree on Tom Taylor's and Jerry Goldstein's lawn in San Francisco started out as a potted house plant. That was 22 years ago. Now it's a towering pine - with holiday decorations to match.
This year, the Fullerton, Calif., couple didn't feel they had time to string lights, and Ms. Hansburg fretted about whether she could skip it. Standing at her front window, she watched two neighbors climbing ladders, building out their own winter wonderlands. "We are talking full-on lights and a couple of full blowup Santas," she says. "Are they thinking, 'Oh, there is that woman who hasn't put up her lights?' "
Last Saturday, her husband put them up. "We caved! But I'm happy we did," she says.
Dave Nosek of Elburn, Ill., couldn't compete with his neighbor's sparkling electric icicles, glowing angels and lit-up snowmen. So two years ago, the insurance salesman strung lights on his house that spelled "ditto," with an arrow pointing next door.
"Before I even finished the 'o' people were stopping by and saying, that's hilarious," says Mr. Nosek, 44. Photos of his house spread on blogs.
Now the joke is on him: After Mr. Nosek skipped his famous display last year, neighbors and friends started to complain. "I'm doing it again this year by popular demand," he says.
Some neighborhoods have less-subtle techniques to enforce Christmas compliance. Ben Steinbach just closed on a home in Alameda, Calif., but his unoccupied house already has Christmas lights around its windows.
He isn't sure who strung them, but he isn't surprised: Disclosure documents with his purchase warned that the street, known locally as "Christmas Tree Lane," draws thousands who flock to see a lights display that has been running since 1938.
The message was clear: If you move here, you're expected to string lights. Mr. Steinbach has never hung lights before. "But I am open to the challenge," he says.
Steve Geahry, who leads the community decoration effort, says the outgoing owner of Mr. Steinbach's house strung the lights as a goodwill gesture. "We would have had a guerrilla lighting if she hadn't," he says.
The experience of Tom and Jerry's San Francisco tree, which attracts up to 30,000 visitors, is a cautionary tale of how Christmas can get out of control.
It started with a house plant. When it grew too large for their living room, Mr. Taylor replanted the pine in front of the house. There, it tapped an underground water source and began growing quickly.
One fateful year, Mr. Taylor decided to do it up for Christmas. "Everyone in the neighborhood was, like, 'Oh we love it, blah, blah, blah,' " he says.
"The more I did, the more it became popular," he says. "People were coming to do their pictures in front of it."
As the tree grew ever taller, Mr. Taylor stuck with a theme: The decorations grew at the same rate so the tree would always look as though it was a scale version of a typical 6-foot Christmas tree.
Today, the pine towers over the house, and some of the presents are the size of cars.
The hardest part is "getting the energy to face it every year," says Mr. Taylor. "It is the most wonderful time of the year if you love working 24/7."
It starts around Thanksgiving each year. Mr. Taylor's elves, all of whom are covered by California workman's compensation insurance, attach steel beams to the tree, to make sure it can hold up decorations through wind and rain.
Once it is done, the homeowners pay a friend to don a Santa suit and pose for pictures between 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. "One school asked us if we could have a Santa for them at 3 in the afternoon. We're not Macy's," he says.
Keeping it running is an ongoing task, including fixing mechanical toys and cleaning up melted candy canes.
The duo has no sponsors, and they don't want to think about how much their Christmas extravaganza costs. "If we really figured it out, we would probably have to stop it," says Mr. Taylor.
Why bother? "Good question," says Mr. Taylor. They have no children and tell visitors the display "is not of any religious or sectarian view."
Mr. Goldstein is Jewish. "He seems to get more out of it than I do," says Mr. Taylor. "All the best Christmas songs were written by Jews," says Mr. Goldstein, a 70-year-old doctor.
The rationale is that everyone expects to see it. One year, they were late in putting up the decorations and didn't have them up before the final week of school, disappointing some field trip groups. They received letters from kids asking if Santa was OK.
"Hordes and hordes of little children come and scream and climb all over and make us nervous," says Mr. Taylor. "But then some people come as adults and say 'I was here when I was a little girl or boy.' That's really the joy of doing it."
What does he want for Christmas? "For everyone to be happy," he says. "And a little peace and quiet."