By Shelby Stewart
Staff Writer
A local Christmas light display decided to give back to the community this year, and raised $5,455 for the Ortonville Community Emergency Fund.
“Last year we raised about $1,700, and our goal this year was about $2,000,” said co-owner Ron Davidson.
The light display, out on Sashabaw Road, is synced to a radio station. Passers-by can pull onto the shoulder and tune in to see the lights moving along with the music. The display is known as Ron & Steve’s Christmas.
“We’ve been doing Christmas lights since 2009, and we moved up here in 2015 and continued doing them here,” he said. “Part of the reason we do it is I like to go out and hand out candy canes and just get to talk to people and hear their stories.”
In 2020, he said, people tried to give him money, though they had never collected money for the display before.
“So we started collecting for OCEF, and we didn’t even start collecting until the week of Christmas that year,” he said. “This year, we collected donations from the start.”
The display is usually up and going by the Friday after Thanksgiving, black Friday, and goes until the weekend after Jan, 1.
“We start putting things up in October,” he said. “Every year we keep adding more and more lights, and we keep starting earlier and earlier. We don’t turn them on right away, but we start putting them up early.”
The display is all full-color lights, and the loop time for the music is 40 minutes. To see videos of the display, visit Ron and Steves Christmas on Facebook.
“I appreciate everybody’s generosity for their donations, and so does OCEF,” he said. “We look forward to this every year and can’t wait to see everybody back this year.”