On the north side of Cassville on Farm Road 1107, the glow of more than 13,000 Christmas lights shines bright on the Batsche property.
First-place winners in the Cassville Area Chamber of Commerce’s Christmas Decorating Contest, Tom and Cristie Batsche spend more than a month prepping the Jewell and Billy Thomas farm for the happiest of holidays, earning a “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation” nickname in the process.
“I was ecstatic [when I learned we won],” Tom said. “The kids all call me ‘Batsche Griswold,’ and my daughter, Ashley Stumpff, got third place. She got the gift of loving Christmas, too.”
While Tom said his daughter prefers blow-up displays, he and Cristie enjoy creating a classic creation with lights.
“Our driveway is about a football field long, and I’ve named that ‘Candy Cane Lane’ and put candy canes all the way down it,” Tom said. “My goal is to have 20,000 Christmas lights, and this year, we are at 13,360.”
Tom said the LED lights start going up in October, with he and Cristie both working day jobs and needing the weekends to get the display set up for lighting after Thanksgiving. Takedown in January, weather permitting, takes only a few days.
“It’s an unwritten rule around here that you can’t light them until after Thanksgiving,” Tom said. “About 90-95% of the lights are LED, and there’s no real theme. We just like putting up a lot of Christmas lights. With me trucking, a lot of the work is on 2- or 3-day weekends. We start early and just work at it, running tests and replacing what needs replacing.
“Cris is very diligent with our 10-year-old lights. If a strand goes bad, she will sit at the kitchen table and pull each light to check them, and she’ll fix it. They also come down way easier than they go up.” The Batsches have plenty of experience with lights, as they ran as big a display as they could in town previously.
“Our old house on Looney Drive, we used to decorate that [extensively]. We had so many lights and extension cords that Cris had to have all the cooking and everything done because once you turned the lights on, you couldn’t use any appliances.”
The Farm Road 1107 property previously belonged to Cristie’s parents, Jewell and Billy, who also had a penchant for creating a Christmas glow.
“They liked putting up lights, but not to the same magnitude as us,” Tom said.
Tom said he’d like to expand the spectacle with blow-up displays, but one big factor is preventing such an expansion.
“I’d like to get some in the fields, but it’s tough with our cattle,” he said. “They like to chew. But, we have a lot of blow-ups that Cris’ mom and dad bought us over the years that are quite old.”
Rather than chancing the cows chewing on displays, Tom said his focus going forward is the treeline. Retirement next year, he said, and some special equipment may make all the difference.
“When I retire, I hope to have more time to put into it,” he said. “I also need to get a skylift to get in the trees, and once I get ahold of that — look out. I could get the trees, the and the shed all done. We have 3,0004,000 lights still that are not even up. We try our best, but there’s just not enough time.”
Along with the outside, Tom said the inside of the Batsches’ house is extensively decorated.
“It’s wall-to-wall Christmas,” he said. “We do it all for the love of Christmas.”
The exterior lights, Tom said, also serve another purpose.
“It gets people to slow down on my road,” he said. “You can almost see the glow as you get to the city’s north water tower.”
Tom said the display is lit nightly, from about 5:15-10 p.m., at the property located at 14655 Farm Road 1107. It will be lit through the first week of January.
