The corner of Schopper and Boies Roads––that was the buzz around town. The most ambitious display of Christmas and holiday lights anywhere, everyone said. I cranked up the Right Field Mobile News Cruiser, called veteran photographer Marty Wangelin and went to see what the fuss was about.
When I arrived at Boies and Schopper, I was, at first, thinking I had been misled. Outside of a few lights on a house at the top of an expansive, upward sloping lawn, there wasn’t much. Seconds later, the whole southern end of the Town of Aurora lit up, or so it seemed. Oak trees lining a forever driveway and willows out in a huge yard started dancing to a strobe beat, while the house and barn lights chased each other around until it looked like the buildings would boogie right off the hill. A sign created in LED bulbs by the road spelled out “MERRY CHRISTMAS” and “TUNE TO FM 91.9.” Instantly my car radio became part of the magic with a soundtrack of seasonal and rock and roll tunes keeping time with the lights––or was it vice versa?
At the top of the 500-foot driveway, I met Mike Bojanowski who, with his wife Ashley, are the architects of this dazzling display. Ashley Kruse Bojanowski grew up in East Aurora; Mike is peripherally related to the Mill Road Bojanowski family, but he grew up in Lancaster, graduated from high school in 2006 and went to Buff State, where he got a degree in––can you guess? –– engineering.
As we looked down across their lofty property with the sunset just conceding to encroaching darkness in the southwestern sky and with Buffalo glimmering like the Emerald City to the northwest, his light show began to take over.
Mike explained that there are 15,000 (fifteen thousand!) LED lights between his house, barn and yard. It took a gigantic spool of electrical wire, almost two miles of it, to connect them. He has software that he uses to communicate with three PLCs (programmable logic controllers, if you have to ask…I certainly did) to run 16 channels, each channel governing a specific set of lights. Sixty strobe lights flash in time to the music, which is broadcast on a small-range FM station, 91.9, that transmits only to the edge of the property, perhaps a few hundred yards in each direction. The music that comes through your car radio plays on a 45-minute repeating loop and features Christmas and inspirational tunes, plus some rock and roll (“We Will Rock You”) and tunes from Frozen for the youngsters. To my question about his electric bill, I was astonished to hear that the light show, running five hours a night, adds only $15 a month. It won’t surprise you to learn that Mike began setting up the 2020 version of his show in October. He tried leaving parts of it up all year to save some of the labor, but it didn’t work, so come January, he’ll take it all down and store it in his barn for 2021.
Even at 32, Mike already is 10 years into Christmas decorating.
“I started,” he told me, “in 2010 when I was living with my parents. WGRZ had a competition and I was runner-up. In 2015, I bought my own house in Lancaster. That Christmas I figured out a special way to propose to my wife. I spelled out ‘Will You Marry Me?’ in lights on the roof of the house with two boxes, ‘YES’ and ‘NO’ on either side of the proposal. I gave Ashley two controllers, one that would light up the ‘yes’ box, another that would light up the ‘no’ box. Luckily for me, she lit up the yes box, although I actually had both controllers wired to yes.”
The couple married not long after and two years ago, built the Boies Road house with the help of the Kruse and Bojanowskis. Last year they welcomed their son, Beckham, to the family.
Last Christmas Mike had a pretty good display. But with the pandemic putting such a limitation on holiday fun for kids and families, Ashley urged him to go big this year, since their light show is perfect for car viewing and social distancing and will thrill the youngsters (and us oldsters, too). Mike figures he has a good 100 hours into the project, hours that come in addition to his full-time job as a mechanical engineer at Aurubis Buffalo, formerly American Brass. Ashley is a quality and education director at Greenfield Health and Rehabilitation Center in Lancaster. She runs an interior design business as well, called, appropriately, Hilltop Living. Response to their light show has been so overwhelming that the Bojanowskis decided to create a GoFundMe page (Hilltop Light Show) to benefit the Rural Outreach Center.
The light show goes on from 5 to 9 p.m. during the week and 5 to 10 p.m. on weekends. From the village, take Center Street to Emery Road, turn right to head west, and then make a left on Boies Road. Tune your radio to 91.9 and you can’t miss it. And you shouldn’t miss it; the Bojanowskis have really lit up the holiday spirit for all of us.
Pretty obnoxious for their neighbors.