Flipping the switch: Let there be lights

On the rainy Monday morning before Thanksgiving, Keith Yarter was walking the grounds of the Warm Beach Christian Camps & Conference Center. The center is on a bluff overlooking a bay, and like everywhere in the Northwest, it's anything but warm in November.

But the director of The Lights of Christmas likes to meander the grounds during this important week, the week before the holiday-lights festival begins.

Yarter recalls the work that's gone on since last spring, and he also can remember the first time he saw the display, a time when his family grew closer.

The Lights of Christmas near Stanwood is Western Washington's largest outdoor-lighting display, with more than a million lights illuminating about 15 acres.

For 20 days, the nighttime festival transforms this conference center into a Christmas village.

"The Lights of Christmas uses annually about 500 kilowatts of power," said Patrick Taylor, a retired electrical engineer who volunteers his expertise during the festival.

"That sounds like a lot, but statistically, if people who come to The Lights of Christmas turn their lights off at home, we save power. We actually use less power than if these people just stay home," Taylor said.

The scale of the lighting displays, on the other hand, does require multiple substations and seven electrical meters.

"We use a tremendous amount of lighting," Taylor said. "If you were to take all of the light strings and connect them end to end, they would reach from Warm Beach Camp to the Space Needle."

"Extension cords — I measured all of them one year and we used a little over 11 miles of various sizes of extension cords."

Decorating challenge

Dozens of massive cedars, firs and pines become living Christmas trees, and the camp's cottages, bunkhouses and other buildings are decorated as well.

The program center becomes Joyland, Maple Center becomes Tinhorn Town, and the grounds are alive with storytellers, carolers, horse-drawn wagons, open-pit fires and five entertainment stages.

Huge, artificial swans ring a pond, dozens of artificial deer dot the grounds, and live animals take residence at a petting farm under a circus big top.

And somebody gets to decorate it all.

In his office, network administrator Mike Hall, a computer expert, was getting into his holiday persona. For the past 10 years, he has been Bruce the Spruce, a talking Christmas tree based on an elf he remembered from his childhood in the Adirondacks.

"I have to keep up with my preschool TV so that I can talk to their characters," Hall said. "Bob the Builder, Dora the Explorer, all of those. Little ones come in and suspend disbelief and really react to it. And we also get adults that will say, 'I find myself, while I'm talking to you, staring at the eyes of the tree and communicating.' "

Bruce converses one on one with people who wait in line for an audience with the tree, which also has big blue eyeballs and bright red satin lips. There are no arms and no feet. He's basically a tree with eyes and lips.

Don't tell the kids, but Hall isn't hunkered down inside the tree getting hypothermia five hours a night for 20 days. "I'm in another room, and we have the ability so that I can see and hear everything that's going on," Hall said.

The Sowers

For weeks, a group called the Sowers has been living on the grounds in an RV park called "Sowers Village." Sowers is an acronym standing for "Servants on Wheels Ever Ready," and this national volunteer group takes its name from a Bible verse in Galatians: "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap."

From painting at Prescott Pines Camp in Arizona to cleaning up at Shepherd of the Ozarks in Missouri, "you sign up for where you like to go," said Duane Roberts, here with wife Carol. "And let's face it, you'll see the Florida, Texas, California projects fill up in the winter; Michigan, Wisconsin, Montana and Alaska fills up in the summer."

These retired educators from Oregon sold their house last summer and, after two yard sales and renting a 10-by-20 storage unit, went on the road full time in their 36-foot RV.

The post office forwards their mail for $40 a month, they have no property taxes, and they often pick projects near their kids.

"It's a work-travel situation," Roberts said. "We have a Sowergram, a booklet that lists all the projects across the United States."

"The Sowers are kind of like their own little family," his wife said. "We have a lot of our own activities that we do together. We're kind of our own little community."

There's a list of chores for the women, another list for the men, and last year Roberts spent his three weeks at the festival welding large Christmas ornaments.

"You never know what you're going to do," he said. "It depends on what Laurie [Fertello, lighting designer] comes up with."

For all faiths

The Lights of Christmas is a traditional Christmas experience, a touch of rural Christmas, even a devotional Christmas — one of the light displays is a nativity scene. Yet there obviously are non-Christians who come to enjoy the festival. How do you make it a ministry, yet welcome everyone?

Yarter, the festival director, uses the word "reconnecting." He remembers his first impression of the event, before he joined the staff.

"When I came here as a guest, it was a time for me to reconnect with my family," Yarter said. "I was serving in the government. I was traveling a lot; it was a hustle and bustle: your kids are going one way, your wife another, and when you came on the grounds, all those things that seemed to be controlling our lives ceased to do that. It's reconnecting with your faith, reconnecting with your family, reconnecting with traditions.

"The people, when they designed it, wanted to touch not just one thing, but many things," Yarter said.

It started with a former theme park in Nashville, Tenn., associated with the Grand Ole Opry.

Pat Patterson, director of administration for the Warm Beach camp and center, has worked at the camp since 1987, and he recalls a task force of several people who went to see Christmas in the Park at then-Opryland Theme Park.

"Opryland Theme Park did a walk-around Christmas festival in their theme park, which was similar to this," Patterson said. "We wanted to draw in the community, have a community Christmas celebration, and we just wrote it up, put a business plan together and presented it to the board of directors."

Yearlong project

About 120 volunteers a night help the staff run the event. The day after it ends, they begin the take-down. And the preparations begin in the spring.

"My team, volunteers, kids groups, come out during our Memorial Day working weekend," Yarter said. "Around June, our paint-and-repair program starts up. All our panels start being looked at, painted and touched up and maybe some new things being manufactured."

They buy from companies in Portland and in Dallas, "and then sometimes we go down to our local Home Depot and pick up their lights," Yarter said. "We are moving into more of the LED lights. It's trying to give the same impact of lights, at the same time trying to be a good steward of electricity and being conscious of the environment."

With a gradual conversion to LED (light emitting diode, used in fiber optics) lights, "that will cut back on our power consumption by a factor of 8 to 1," Taylor said.

The festival is self-supporting but not a big moneymaker, Patterson said. Any proceeds left over go toward Warm Beach camp's year-round costs.

"Breath of fresh air"

If holidays are a time of noticing little miracles, has anyone ever seen even a little miracle on the grounds?

"This place is my Christmas," said actor George Carter, who plays a curmudgeon in "Uh-oh, Here Comes Christmas," a musical based on Robert Fulghum's humorous essays.

"Driving on this campus is just a breath of fresh air every day. The people that you meet here, the atmosphere, the message of the camp itself and what they're trying to bring. I heard somebody say the other day that they've actually seen families come here, and they're typical families arguing. And then when they see the same family leaving, they're completely different."

"I can express it like this," said Lynnwood singer May Palmer. "When I parked my car, I was 42. When I entered the gate, I turned 10. I was reduced to tears because I was taken back to Christmases I experienced in New England as a child."

Palmer was invited this year by assistant director Loren Isaac to do her jazzy, bluesy renditions of Christmas classics. Palmer plans to throw in one of her favorite tunes, a gospel rendition of "Go, Tell It on the Mountain."

"We're going to belt that to the heavens," she said. "We're going to have the angels bending their ears."

Diane Wright: 425-745-7815 or dwright@seattletimes.com