Christmas is hard work for Mike Antreassian. But it’s a labor of love when the job is to spend 80 hours putting up 63,000 lights around his house in the hills overlooking Dover.

The dazzling holiday display brings hundreds of people to his block, seeking that spirit of Christmas they can’t get by shopping at even the fanciest mall.

They come to see the 35-foot tall “waterfall” of lights, the spiral that looks like a spinning Ferris wheel on the side of the house, the tall trees draped with bulbs, the Santa Alley children walk.  He also puts out an old fashioned school desk for kids to write letters to Santa, which they then deliver themselves: they clip the note to a rope and hoist it up with a pulley to a sleigh high on the Antreassian’s roof. Watch the video on www.njmyway!

Antreassian, an engineer at Picatinny Arsenal, has done something like this for two decades, and it keeps getting bigger: last year he put up “only” about 50,000 lights. He says he loves to see the wide-eyed children, and also the looks of happiness on the faces of their parents and even grandparents.  

“Sometimes there’s people not feeling too well,” he says of his visitors. But he has seen how his holiday spectacular “lifts up their spirit.”

It’s the best kind of Christmas gift—and don’t forget that for Antreassian it does not come cheap. At 4 Debbie Place in Dover (that’s the Dover in Morris County) you will see not just the beautiful lights, but also the electric meter spinning at a pretty fast clip.

Several other private homes around the state have spectacular Christmas displays. A couple of websites, www.christmaslightfinder.com and www.tackylighttour.com, let you search by zip code. Here are a few, from north to south:

13 Victoria Lane, Mahwah

136 Arnot St, Lodi

127 Hidden Trail, North Plainfield

58 King Ave., Marlton

Neighborhood at corner of North Ave. and Fourth Ave., Pitman

Got one of these in your neighborhood? Drop us a line or send us a photo by clicking on the link below. We’ll let everyone know about it;  even Santa might drop by to help you get into the spirit.