The iconic Greeley Grizwalds display went dark this year: ‘We get to end it on our terms. I’m really grateful for that’

By Dan England

As the lights flashed around them during last year’s Thanksgiving weekend, Mike Medhurst sat in the hot tub with his wife, Tami, and pondered the future of their Greeley Grizwalds display. 

You know the house. Oh yes, you do. Every night during the holidays, a line of cars would crowd his cul-de-sac in west Greeley, drawn by the tower with the star on top, to watch the hundreds of thousands of lights dance to Trans-Siberian Orchestra and other holiday music that played on their car radio. That’s right. THAT house. 

Medhurst was in the hot tub to celebrate another job well done, but this time, he also hoped it would help soak away the aches in his knees and back and shoulders. The season had just started for the rest of us, but for Medhurst, it was pretty much over. He’d spent two months setting it up, as he always did, using most of his vacation days from the Greeley Fire Department and blueprints he kept of the exact details of where it all should go. 

He decided, then, as the water bubbled, that he didn’t have many years left in him. He briefly considered whether to quit every year, but not really, not until that time in the hot tub. That time laid the groundwork for this year’s realization that even Santa Claus gets tired, and that the display would go dark. 

He’s done. 

Mike, 53, in fact, doesn’t even have the house any longer. Wednesday he closed on his parents’ old house in Windsor. His mother died in April, unexpectedly, and his Dad was ready to move. He doesn’t have the lights any longer either, save for a few bunches he kept. He let a few other crazy decorators in Colorado have first crack, and then he held a yard sale of the rest that extended out to his neighbors’ driveway. All of it was gone in an hour. 

The house was an opportunity too good to pass up, with their children now moved out, and truth be told, after mourning the fact that he was done, he realized he was ready to give it up. 

“When you do something that significant, you either are done because something bad happened, or we were forced to give it up,” Medhurst said. “None of that was the case. We get to end it on our terms. I’m really grateful for that.”

An organic display

Tami and Mike moved into the house 23 years ago and kept adding lights to their Christmas display, and after a couple years, Mike noticed that cars would stop longer than normal in the cul-de-sac. Four years after they first walked in their door, he built up the display to something resembling the lighthouse it became. 

““It grew organically,” Medhurst said. “I realized people enjoyed the work we did, and I think everyone likes that appreciation. Even if they didn’t thank me, you could tell they were watching. And then I thought it was a great opportunity to give something back. I wanted to give them a memory. That’s what drove it. We all have those memories. That’s overlooked and underrated.” 

The house was already a hit — it won the city’s display contest one year — when Medhurst decided to choreograph the lights to music ten years after it began, and that’s when it really took off, he said. He created a website, named the display the Greeley Grizwalds (off “Christmas Vacation” and Clark Grizwalds’ insane house) and had a sign out that listed the short-frequency radio station and hours the display ran. 

Hundreds drove past or stood outside the house every night. Neighbors’ little girls had hot chocolate stands. A couple times, the line of cars went all the way out to 47th Avenue and 4th Street a half-dozen blocks away. Medhurst and Tami would dress up as Mr. and Mrs. Claus and talk to people and hand out candy canes. 

“I didn’t get recognized personally in stores, and I was OK with that,” Medhurst said. “But I’d hear people talk about the house, and that was fun. The house and the display was the celebrity. I was just the man behind the curtain.” 

He had marriage proposals by the house, including last year, when he orchestrated the lights to say “Will You Marry Me?” once for a complete stranger. Last year, he debated whether to have the display because of COVID-19, but he ultimately decided to do it, with a sign out front reminding people to stay distanced. Many stayed in their cars, but the ones who did come out told him how much it meant to them to have the house lit up in a year when joy was hard to find. 

Every year, families would come up and tell them the house helped them grieve through the pain of losing someone. When he recounts those stores, Medhurst gets choked up. 

“I was able to take a moment when they had so much pain in their lives and numb it,” he said. “They were able to focus on other things. They said it was so relieving. That’s what the house did. It overwhelmed their senses.”

A long season

The display, though, took its toll. 

“He was always a crank monster around this time,” Tami said. 

When the wind picked up a couple times this week, Tami was reminded of the times she wouldn’t have been able to sleep because Mike would be stalking around the house, worried about the unfinished display. Thanksgiving dinners were more about what they HAD to do to get through the day, instead of enjoying and relaxing like most others. His birthday was Nov. 15, and Mike never celebrated it because he was too busy. On his vacation days, he’d spend up to 18 hours a day working on it. 

“People would be going to Mexico or Las Vegas,” Medhurst said, “and I’d be out front, with a string of lights.” 

Medhurst never considered paying someone to set it up for him. He couldn’t afford it, and he didn’t think anyone would want the job, and even if those two things weren’t true, he admits he wouldn’t be able to give up control over it. 

“I’m very particular about how it goes up,” he said. “I would get out tape measures and measure it out to the inch.”

The Medhursts also worked hard to keep a good relationship with their neighbors, who they knew would grow weary of the nightly crowds because Tami grew tired of the crowds herself at times. When one neighbor approached him and asked him to end the display an hour earlier, Mike agreed. 

“I didn’t ask permission from them,” Medhurst said, “but I did talk to them. I’d like to think I had a good relationship with my neighbors. I never could have done it without their support. They were always tolerant of it.” 

The police never had to come out to solve a dispute, he said, and those who did want to see the display tried not to block driveways. It worked, even with the very occasional teeth gritting, and as proof, his next-door neighbor put up a display of his own: A sign that flashed “Ditto” with an arrow that pointed to Medhurts’ display. When those neighbors moved, the new occupants did the same thing with their own sign. 

They won’t do anything for their Windsor house this year. They’re unpacking from the move and things are crazy. 

But next year, he will decorate the house with those few bunches of lights he kept. He promises that it will be a traditional display. A normal display. Something that might take an afternoon to set up. 

“If you didn’t know who we were,” Medhurst said, “I doubt you’d even stop.”