Neighborhood light display brings an old tradition back to life
By Betsy Webster
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BLUE SPRINGS, Missouri (KCTV) — A popular Blue Springs neighborhood light display that died ten years ago is being resurrected in a new neighborhood with help from the man who swore he was giving it up.
As you drive down MO-7 Highway, you’ll see an animated sign saying “Welcome to Lakeside at Chapman Farms,” and it won’t take long before you know the neighborhood is in the holiday spirit.
There are 39 animated displays through the community, and cars snake through slowly to see each one. Neighbors don’t seem to mind the traffic one bit.
“It’s great. I mean, the community has come together, the lights just keep growing every year,” remarked resident Tommy Hoff.
They’re not your typical displays. It takes custom to find a dinosaur snacking on a candy cane.
There’s an image of the leg lamp from a Christmas Story and Flick getting his tongue stuck while taking on the dare to lick the school’s flag pole.
The creator is Steve Steiner, the retired electrician and one-time Blue Springs mayor who made dozens of displays on the city’s Chicago Street that brought people in droves for decades. In 2012, he retired those displays and said he was out of the light display business. Then he moved to Chapman Farms and saw how intense people got with their Christmas lights.
“I said, ‘Man, I got to put some on my own house, and I might as well make one of my figures,’” Steiner recalled. “And then the neighbors started saying, ‘Hey, can you make me one?’”
He tries to make each display personal for each hosting home.
“There’s a lady on her knees, taking a picture of Santa while the kid behind them was going ‘ha, ha, ha,’ and she’s a photographer. That’s why I made that for her.”
One of 13 new additions this year is Salvy giving Santa a taste of his Gatorade bucket mischief. That’s after last year’s complex arrangement of Mahomes going long for a touchdown pass to Kelce.
He said he has 11 more requests in the cue for next year and has no way of knowing when he’ll retire his craft again.
“It’s a lot of fun. It’s a lot of fun,” said Steiner. “It’s in my blood, my wife says.”
You can find the entrance at MO-7 and Southwest Chapman Farms Drive in Blue Springs.
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