December, 1981 $2.00 - Desert Magazine of the Southwest

A desert community lights up the season with pride.
Winterhaven
YTou touch tens of thousands of
people through these Christmas
displays. So there's no
way you can forget the experience,"
said Jeffrey Brown. "Our family will
be involved and support Winterhaven's
Christmas Festival of Lights
for as long as we live here."
Artistic Jeff Brown, a 17-year-old
Catalina High School senior in Tucson,
Arizona, is the designer of 1980's
Grand Prize front lawn display:
"Merry Christmas From The Children
Of The World!"
Winterhaven is an 87-acre subdivision
situated along the north-central
city limits of Tucson. Since 1951,
when outdoor Christmas lighting
began, Winterhaven has become a
southern Arizona showplace during
the Christmas season.
Two years ago, a traffic counter,
strung across Winterhaven's curving,
park-like main street called Christmas
Avenue, tallied 87,260 vehicles cruising
bumper to bumper during the twoweek
festival.
Young Brown contained, "My display
included 21 figures of people from
various countries including our own.
Turkey, Greece, Japan and Mexico
were among them. I did a lot of
research to get the right costumes.
The Stanley E. Brown home and
lawn display also won Grand Prize
honors in 1978. Jeff was the designer
46 December, 1981
in that case, too.
We let Jeff have free rein," his
father said. "My wife, Shirley, and
our other four children support him
fully, but he comes up with the ideas."
The Browns have lived in Winterhaven
since 1964.
"When people come up and congratulate
you for winning, well, that's
the fun of the effort. They realize the
work involved and really appreciate
it," Jeff said. "That is primarily the
whole feeling of reward. I've had
teachers come up at school and say,
"Wow! We drove through Winterhaven
last night and saw your grand
prize front lawn. Congratulations!"
Lighting project chairman this year
is Godfrey Sill, a Winterhaven resident
since 1975 and a research scientist at
the University of Arizona's Lunar and
Planetary Laboratory.
"Being astronomers, we began with
star themes for our first Christmas
here. So, to the star of Bethelem we
added the Orion constellation in overhead
white lights. For the right
shoulder of Orion I used a larger red
bulb for Betelguese, which means a
giant's armpit. On the lawn the Magi
approached the manger scene," Sill
said.
"One year, Laurel (his wife)
designed our theme with Mary sitting
in a chair, holding the infant Jesus.
Another combination of star constella-
By Dan B. McCarthy
tions was overhead.
"I found it exceedingly difficult to
make an exhibit look like the constellations
because the magnitudes of the
bulbs just don't match the way they
look in the sky. Everything looked too
bright. Even dim stars. And stars that
were to be five times as bright looked
only twice as bright," the lighting
chairman said.
In 1979 the Sills switched from constellations
to the space program.
"Because the Voyager satellite was
speeding through the solar system, we
put Santa Claus on a Mariner craft,
leaving earth for a space journey. One
year we had a model of Jupiter rotating
on its axis. It won honorable
mention," Sill added.
Sill does not miss snow at Christmas,
after having lived for more than
three decades in snowbelt scenes, from
Chicago to Massachusetts.
"I guess there wasn't any snow in
Israel when Christ was born anyway. I
feel it's a purely cultural thing that
there has to be snow on the ground at
Christmas. Shoot! All you have to do
during a Tucson winter is go into the
mountains surrounding us. Mount
Lemmon is only 30 miles away in the
Santa Catalinas. They ski up there.
"I suppose there's a certain
mystique about snow and Christmas
decorations. Every night Laurel and I
walk in the neighborhood, looking at