‘Doesn’t feel like home’: Ontario family selling house over new Christmas lights bylaw

A family from Kingsville, Ont., says it has decided to leave town over a new bylaw that would put limits on its popular Christmas lights show.

A family in Kingsville, Ont., has decided to pull up stakes and move after the city council passed a bylaw that would restrict the family’s Christmas light show.

Colten Williams began putting together his Christmas light show a decade ago at the behest of his grandmother, who was inspired by light shows she had seen on TV.

“I’m like, yeah, sure, you know, we can try,” he explained, recounting the story. “So we bought a controller and we had some lights on her house flashing and going to the sounds for a couple of years.”

Williams said that over a dozen cars would stop by each night to see grandma’s display. But within a couple of years, she would pass away after a battle with cancer. The show then moved to Williams’ family home on Marshwoods Boulevard.

After a decade, it slowly morphed into a display with more than 60,000 lights that takes 500 man-hours to assemble

“That’s just physically outside putting up like putting up controllers, you know, running cables, all that kind of stuff,” Williams said.

“Never mind all the behind-the-scenes work. A three-minute song takes me about now 30, 40 hours of programming, which is all done, you know, way earlier in the summertime, in the off months.”

In a normal year, the Williams clan would put on three shows a night, with a fourth included on Friday and Saturday.