The Ritter Family Christmas in Centreville, VA
Welcome to the page for “The Ritter Family Christmas”, in Centreville, VA. My parents would drive our family around the area looking at houses lit up with beautiful Christmas decorations. As a teenager, I enjoyed visiting my brother Ken’s house in Lexington Park, MD at Christmas time. He decorated his whole house and yard with lights and var
ious lit up figures, and it looked very festive. I married my wonderful wife in 1985. After living in numerous apartments for 13 years, we finally bought our first house in Centreville, VA. The house is on a corner lot, with a large yard - perfect for putting up Christmas decorations! I always wanted to decorate my yard with Christmas decorations , and I purchased my first outdoor decorations that year. I purchased a life sized blow mold manger scene and a few light strings for around the roof line. It looked nice, but I wanted to take my love of Christmas decorating to a new level. Every year I added to the display and now have around 35,000 LED lights with countless lit up figures, animated scenes, and a set of light up blow mold soldiers which stand at attention all along the perimeter of my yard. Although the display started out simply, it had grown quite large by 2005 and I wanted to add some “WOW” to it. I am a computer geek, so I started researching to see if there was a way to synchronize the Christmas decorations to music. I found a company called Animated Lighting who said they could take my static light display for my home and synchronize the lights to music , which I felt would dazzle my community. In 2006, our display went from a simple static display to having a computer controlling all the decorations and synchronizing them to music. You can even sit in your car, tune your radio to 105.7 FM ,and listen to the music that is being broadcasted by a low frequency F.M. transmitter. Decorating our house for Christmas has become a year round activity for me. As soon as the Christmas season is over and the decorations have come down, I start planning and preparing for the next year’s Christmas display, which seems to come quicker every year. Many times my friends and neighbors introduce me to their friends and families as the guy who lives in the Christmas house. I love to see more and more people come by every year and to see many of the same people coming back year after year with their friends and families. I always wanted to have one of the biggest and best displays in the neighborhood. I wanted a display that would become part of families’ Christmas traditions; bringing their children to create memories that would last forever. If you are in the Northern Virginia area after Thanksgiving, please stop by and enjoy the Christmas show.
