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Giant Grinch Replaces Christmas Exhibit

Giant, Leering Grinch Replaces Extravagant Christmas Exhibit at Silicon Valley Home

MONTE SERENO, Calif. Nov 25, 2004 -- For six years, Alan and Bonnie Aerts transformed their Silicon Valley home into a Christmas cornucopia complete with surfing Santa, nativity scene, giant candy canes flanking the driveway and a carol-singing chorus of life-sized mannequins.

The popular display attracted thousands of visitors, coming from as far as San Francisco and Sacramento, to Monte Sereno, an upscale suburb just west of San Jose. After the exhibit was featured on NBC's "Weekend Today" last year, more than 1,500 cars prowled the cul-de-sac each night.

But this year, the merry menagerie worth about $150,000 in custom-designed props stayed indoors. Instead, on the manicured lawn outside the couple's Tudor mansion stood a single tiding: a 10-foot-tall Grinch with green fuzz, rotting teeth, and sickly, beet-red eyeballs.

The Aertses erected the smirking giant to protest the couple across the street 16-year residents who complained that the annual display was turning the quiet cul-de-sac into a Disneyesque nightmare.

Alan Aerts, who makes sure the Grinch's spindly finger points directly to the offending neighbors' house, says their complaints to city bureaucrats killed the exhibit, which last year raised $10,000 in donations for Toys for Tots. It also violated the Christmas spirit, he said.

"When I grew up, people decorated everything it was wonderful to be a kid," said the 48-year-old soft drink distributor and philanthropist, whose causes include child burn victims, cancer foundations and seeing-eye dogs. "If you can't even put up a display these days, what kind of people have we become? We've lost the Christmas spirit."

The death knell for the exhibition came last year, when neighbors Susan and Le Nguyen collected 90 signatures from residents who worried about the kitsch expansion.

The display, powered by extra feeds from Pacific Gas & Electric because the Aertses' 900-amp home wasn't sufficient, attracted about 100,000 visitors in 26,000 vehicles between Thanksgiving and Christmas last year.

The Aertses hired a security guard to help direct traffic flow on the cul-de-sac, but traffic became so bad that Susan Nguyen said the couple couldn't have friends over for their own low-key celebrations.

"I love Christmas don't get me wrong," said an exasperated Susan Nguyen, 52, who raised three children in their home on Danielle Place. "But it kept getting bigger and bigger. There was no end in sight. It was oppressive. Maybe not if you just spent 10 minutes admiring it from your car, but if you lived next door it was definitely oppressive."

In 2003, Monte Sereno council members passed an ordinance requiring anyone wishing to erect such an exhibit to get a permit. After studying the permit application process, the Aertses decided that it wasn't worth the hassle this year.

So Alan Aerts, a 6-foot-5 amateur body builder, commissioned a Southern California firm to build the Grinch. The $2,500 motorized statue waves its arms and emits steam from the base, while a raspy tenor belts out, "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch."

Bonnie Aerts, 46, said they didn't intend to spark a neighborhood feud. Rather, she hopes the Grinch sends a message to officials in the posh Silicon Valley suburb.

"The bottom line is that people should be able to decorate their houses," she said, scratching the jowls of one of their two Mastiff hounds. "Our address is in the USA, not the Soviet Union, and you shouldn't need a permit just to put up some Christmas stuff."

Le Nguyen has a different view. He applauds city officials for having the temerity to shut down the extravagant exhibit. As for local charities that won't benefit this year, he wondered why the couple couldn't donate the $50,000 it cost to set up, maintain and tear down the display.

"It's called Monte Sereno for a reason it's supposed to be serene," Le Nguyen, 55, said in the front foyer of his property, which used to be a dairy. "We wake up to Christmas for about 45 days of the year. You ever seen the movie Groundhog Day? It's just like that."

[original article]

Posted by thinkum at November 26, 2004 10:41 AM