Gianni Mon and Eugenia Wood's power bill triples during the holiday season.
Eugenia Wood has too many Christmas lights. The season is only one month out of 12, but six years of pillaging post-holiday sales has given a home to every colored light and character left lonely and afraid on a New Year’s shelf, all packed into a sparkling Christmas casserole that can be seen from across the San Lorenzo.
A merry state of disorder reigns, and for the first year it may be more than can be managed by one Beach Flats Victorian.
“This your house?” The driver of an SUV asks out his window to gray–haired Gianni Mon, cousin to Wood and co-resident of Christmas Land, who is bustling around the nativity set and anchoring a glowing Santa next to a glowing Virgin Mary. Mon shoots back an affirmative and a gap–toothed grin. SUV asks how long it took to put up.
“About a week,” he answers, and the driver is silent while Mon chortles.
Nearby, Santa lurks over Baby Jesus. Their stable is thatched with branches, and the scent of pine reaches across the street to where Wood stands, triumphantly taking it all in.
“I wish the whole street is like this,” she says in a thick Greek accent shared with Mon. She sighs and confesses that the number of decorations that could be reasonably housed inside the home was surpassed somewhere between the tenth Santa and the giant mobile airplane swinging from the eaves.
Which is why Eugenia Wood is also in trouble with the city. Where does a homeowner store enough lights to cover a Santa Cruz block? Answer: In the shed her cousin built without any permits.
“Somebody complained that I put up the shed with no permit,” says Wood, a small straw-haired woman in leopard print leggings and fuzzy red sweater. “How does she know I put up shed with no permit? And I say, ‘Well, it’s nothing to sleep in there, rent it or get money out of it. It’s only Santa Claus Hotel!’”
She spreads her hands out and laughs at the madness of city officials.
The gale–force winds of the past week have also been wreaking havoc on the display, relocating several blinking wire Christmas trees from the roof to the driveway and scattering the nativity figures across the street. Dozens of hanging chimes peal frantically as Mon re-winds a string of lights, and Wood directs his attention to Winnie the Pooh characters picnicking on the roof.
“It’s a little windy, but it’s fine, you know. I always have fun when I do it. I love it,” Mon says, his eyes twinkling.
“We don’t nail them to the roof,” Wood explains. “Now we screw them into platforms. First year it was on the roof. And you know what happened to the roof: it was leaking!” She bursts out laughing. “I had to put in a new roof. Well, it was old anyway.”
Mon trots off to a pile of scrap wood and pulls out a large wooden hoop, explaining that while his cousin is the mastermind of Christmas, he, Gianni, is the provider of Valentines Day.
“I will make giant hearts that say ‘I love you,’ and ‘Tu amor,’” he gushes. “See this hoop? I will stretch canvas across it and write ‘I miss you!’”
Buy houses, then cover them with lights. Forty-five years after she emigrated here from Greece, Eugenia Wood’s American dream is realized. For a month and a half their electricity triples, and instead of the total being $600, the three–unit property gets an $1,800 bill. She’s willing to pay even more if it will keep the shed, although according to her account of communiqués with the city planning department, there aren’t many options.
“I called to make an appointment to speak with the mayor,” Woods says. “I don’t care, what am I going to do, throw them away at the end of the month? On the seventh of January? I have no other choice. I can tell you something else? Because I didn’t make a permit, now I have to pay for a permit to tear it down. I don’t know what to do, I was crying when she told me that I couldn’t do nothing. I haven’t cried for worse things.”
A side effect of the American Dream. The shed is a double door affair piggybacked on the side of the house, a small barnacle veiled in flowers. It’s been a Christmas character summer home for five years, and also, evidently, a complaint buried in a pile of complaints that finally reached the surface.
“I will even write a letter to the Obama. Let me pay! I made mistake, how much you want?” she asks. “One thousand, two thousand, three thousand, I pay! It’s very important. I’ll throw them away…or leave them up all year. How will they like that?”
