Excerpt from christmasdisplay.ca:
Musson's Famous Christmas Display:
Our family has been decorating our home for the holidays for more than 30 years. It all started in Calgary, Alberta, Canada when my dad started to string up a few lights on the house. Every year we would add additional strings of lights.
Our family moved to Burlington, Ontario, Canada in 1976. We continued to put up lights but for some reason Dad’s interest in the lights seemed to fade. That was when I decided to take an interest in decorating the house. It started with a few strings outlining the house. Next a few wired form reindeers were added. When we noticed that people would stop and look at the lights we realized that we weren’t the only ones who enjoyed Christmas lights. That gave us the spark to get things really going.
We first decided to not only outline the house but also to “fill in” the outlines. We wanted to keep the lights different from everyone else so decided to start custom building our own figures to decorate with.
Dad got a welder and started bending steel and welding it into forms which we had drawn on paper. We then attached lights on the wire frames to bring the figures to life.
Every year we added more figures. In 1997 I decided to animate some of the figures with a light controller used by DJs. We got a dragon to wag its tail, soldiers salute, wheels to spin and fire to leave the dragon’s mouth and even a melting snowman. 2002s addition makes use of animation in a unique way.
Why do we got to all the work of putting up these lights? Well, if no one came to see them we would stop doing them. We do it as a celebration of Christmas. We do it to give something back to our community. We do it to bring smiles on people’s faces. Contrary to what many may think, we do not do it for the publicity. I personally shy away from the publicity and let Dad take the lime-light. After all it was Dad who started the tradition..
We have been approached over the years with a very large number of people asking if we would support them collecting money for charity in front of our display. We certainly support the giving to charities but we felt that if we said okay to one group we would have to say okay to another. We have therefore said “No” to all charities wanting to collect moneys or sell goods at our display and have discouraged people from doing so.
Also, this is a time of giving and we do this display to give to the people who come to see the display. We feel like any attempt to capitalize on our display either for charity of other, takes away from the gift we give of lights to the people in this area. We want to have something people can approach to see without feeling obligated in any way to make donations.
Excerpt from
www.thestar.com on December 20, 2017:
A Burlington community is mourning after the death of a long-time resident known for his impressive holiday displays.
Doug Musson and his family moved to 3360 Spruce Ave. in Burlington in 1976, an address that became famous over the years for its elaborate Christmas light decorations.
He died Monday evening at the age of 82 after falling from a ladder while inspecting a part of the house.
Very sad indeed. My condolences go to the family. May he rest in peace.
