Goodbye till next year, Candy Cane Lane

What goes up, must come down.

That applies to the 74-foot Norway spruce in New York's Rockefeller Center and the 13-foot candy canes that line the curb on the 100 block of Garth Road in Oreland, Montgomery County.

Next to the usual street sign, there's a red-and-white placard proclaiming Garth Road Candy Cane Lane. The 20 or so single-family homes on this one block are illuminated each December with Santas, sleighs, snowmen, even a custom-made mailbox for special deliveries to the North Pole.

Turning onto Garth Road is like arriving in Vegas or Rio during Carnival. It's so aglow, gawkers come by the carload; retirement homes send buses.

But in an inevitable sign of the season, angels and elves are unplugged and laid to rest in basements and crawl spaces, leaving winter as bleak as a Dickens childhood.

Traditionally this is done on the day after Jan. 6, which is Epiphany or Three Kings Day in Roman Catholic and Anglican churches. (For Russian, Greek, and Eastern Orthodox churches that cling to the Julian calendar, Jan. 7 was Christmas Day.)

This year, Jan. 7 was a fairly sunny Saturday, with temperatures encroaching on the 60-degree mark. It was a no-excuses kind of day for yard work.

So there was Bob Chappetta, a 25-year resident of Garth Road, taking down the two giant candy canes on the curb in front of his house. The bright-colored candy canes make the street magical, he said Saturday.

"It doesn't matter what kind of day you're having," Chappetta said. "When you turn down this block on a December night, all your troubles go away and you're back in the fantasyland of childhood.

"Thank God for Jerry," Chappetta said. "He started it all."

That would be Jerry Schneider, who runs the nearby O'Towne (for Oreland) Tavern with his wife, Cheryl.

The couple started small when they moved here on a December day 23 years ago. Gradually, they acquired a mother lode of vintage hard-plastic decorations: a Nativity scene with Wise Men and a menagerie; toy soldiers, lollipops, elves, penguins, oversize snowflakes, wreaths, carolers, bells, and an entourage of smiling snowmen.

Santa in his sleigh pulled by a team of reindeer appears to fly across the sky outside the Schneiders' house.

At some point, eight or nine years ago (nobody remembers exactly when), Jerry Schneider built candy canes from PVC pipe, strung them with lights, and sold them to his neighbors at cost, thus amping up the street's celebration.

A volunteer firefighter, Schneider arranged to have Santa arrive on a fire truck every year and pull a giant mock switch to "turn on" the lights on Candy Cane Lane.

"People come from far and wide," Cheryl Schneider said. "There's a traffic jam every Christmas Eve, when people drive here after Mass to see the lights."

"The electric bill? It doubles," Cheryl Schneider says matter-of-factly. "But it tripled before we started using LED lights."

Life is gloomy enough when the sun sets at 4 p.m., said Colin McKelvie, who has lived here 18 years. "You wake up in the dark, go to sleep in the dark."

But the darkness really descends when the lights go out on Candy Cane Lane.

McKelvie's brood: Bridget 14, Meghan, 11, and Ryan, 5, burst outside Saturday to help with the de-construction process.

Jerry Schneider climbed an extension ladder to unwind the wires keeping Santa's sleigh aloft, and each member of the McKelvie clan caught a reindeer when the display came down.

Like true Santa's helpers, the McKelvies carried the reindeer, the sleigh, and its contents to Schneider's backyard.

"It takes forever to get ready for Christmas," McKelvie said wistfully. "And then it's over in a flash."

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