The green glow on Fountain Avenue draws Christmas visitors like moths to a flame.
Thirty trees spanning a residential hillside property are wound in large, kelly-green, “boomer bulbs.” Twelve of those 30 trees are majestic, 20-foot Deodar cedars that span the width of the property along Fountain. The conifers’ weeping branches swagged in big green bulbs make an impressive welcome.
At the top of the hill’s tree-lined driveway are seven houses surrounding a circular drive, all of them edged in white icicle lights with twinkling nets of white lights covering every home’s shrubbery. And in the center of this winter wonderland is an elaborate Santa’s workshop.
When the Times Free Press asked readers last Christmas about their favorite locations to see Christmas lights, the answer “Helton Hill” appeared multiple times. Checking it out, Helton Hill turned out to be the East Ridge property containing seven houses owned by members of the family that operates J.D. Helton Roofing Co.
Their light show started 20 years ago as Herman Schrader’s Christmas gift to the neighborhood. Every year since, he’s bought a few more lights and decorations until now it is a full, drive-through experience that draws as many as 50 cars a night, more on weekends. It’s not a blaring, flashing, computer-synced dance of lights, but a light show that is quietly serene and simply lovely.
“I don’t want to get real gaudy with it. I just want it to look pretty. You’d be surprised the number of people who come by and just thank us for doing it, tell us it’s so beautiful up here,” says Schrader.
“We have people who come from out of town to see it,” he says. “One couple from Clarksville, Tenn., told us they plan their vacation to visit their kids here at this time in order to come up here and drive around.”
Schrader not only bought all the decorations, he puts them all out — starting in September — to have them ready to flip on the Friday after Thanksgiving each year. The light show occurs nightly from 5:30 to 10:30 p.m. until New Year’s Day. Schrader says the electrical bill for the show isn’t too much of a hardship since it is divided among the owners of the seven houses.
“He’ll take three months getting those decorations up,” Jason Helton says of his cousin’s work.
Helton grew up in one of those seven houses and lives elsewhere now, but still brings his grandkids back to enjoy the lights.
If you go
Where: Christmas lights on Helton Hill. Where: Intersection of Fountain Avenue and Jason Avenue, one block off Belvoir Avenue, in East Ridge. Hours: 5:30-10:30 p.m. nightly until New Year’s. Admission: Free, but a collection barrel is set up for nonperishable food donations to the Chattanooga Community Kitchen. Directions: From Brainerd Road, turn onto Belvoir Avenue, crossing Interstate 24 and continuing on Belvoir toward Ringgold Road for about three blocks. Turn right onto Fountain Avenue across from Belvoir Christian Academy. Helton Hill is one block down Fountain.
“They love it. I think everybody that sees it loves it,” says Helton.
Even though it is private property, visitors are encouraged to turn into the driveway between two large stone columns at the intersection of Fountain Avenue and Jason Drive. Head up the hill and bear right to follow the circle around a centrally located pool and poolhouse that is transformed into Santa’s workshop for the light show. Once around the circle, drivers bear to the right and follow the driveway along the line of cedar trees and candy canes back to Fountain Avenue.
“I have to get a bucket truck from my cousin, Greg Bowman, who has Nabco Electric, to put the lights on the cedar trees,” says Schrader of the line of evergreen trees spanning the front yard of his mother, Dorothy Schrader.
“Ten years ago, we went to Gatlinburg and, as we were going down the parkway, there was one little tree out in the median decorated in all green lights. I said, ‘That’s what I want.’ So when I got home, I took out the old trees in the front yard, and I planted those Deodar cedars in a row just for this.”
Schrader’s addition this year is 1,500 lineal feet of green rope lighting that completely edges the driveway through its circular route.
“I was in the Dominican Republic last year on vacation and they had red rope lighting that went to different buildings. I told my wife, ‘That sure is pretty. I know where I can use some of that.’ So I called my supplier in Texas and asked for green rope lighting. It comes in 150-foot spools and we bought 10 spools.”
Another new addition complements the green tree-lined driveway: 18 lit candy canes, each about 4 feet in height, that were $225 apiece. Other free-standing light displays around the yard include an old-fashioned horse and carriage, snowmen, packages, a gingerbread house and toy soldiers.
An animated Mr. and Mrs. Santa Claus are spotlit in a small gazebo, but the 7-foot, velvet-suited Santa in the pool pavilion-turned-workshop is the crowd favorite, says Schrader.
“All the kids love having their picture made with him,” he explains.
Another photo-op is the life-size sleigh decked out in toys and trees near St. Nick.
Schrader says that, in the two decades the family has hosted the light show, he’s never worried about security.
“We’ve only had one problem in all these years when a kid tried to carry off a soldier, and I stopped him. We’ve never had anything go missing. People are pretty appreciative.”
Contact Susan Pierce at spierce@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6284.