‘Great Christmas Light Fight’ champions scale down display

After nearly a decade of displaying award-winning Christmas lights, a Henderson couple is scaling back this year to help limit the spread of coronavirus.

Maria and Juan Torres, winners of “The Great Christmas Light Fight” on ABC, are keeping things simple this year in hopes that fewer people will gather outside their home, where the couple can’t control social distancing and mask wearing.

“It breaks our heart not to do it, but Juan needed to take the year off,” said Maria Torres, 52. “He’s extremely tired, especially from the last two years with the filming of show. That takes a lot out of you. Last year we had probably hundreds, maybe even thousands of people, and a lot of people would congregate. How are you going to control that?”

Torres said her 95-year-old mother suffers from dementia and lives with the couple, so they get tested every time they think they have a cold, and Juan Torres rarely goes out.

“Family comes first, and we have to take care of each other,” Maria Torres said, citing the long, cold nights her husband would spend outside building their display.

Torres said her neighbors are grateful for the smaller crowds, too, because visitors often filled their driveways.

Money is tighter

When Juan Torres lost his job as a casino valet parker because of the pandemic, the couple’s plans to build an underwater world this Christmas were put on hold. Winning “Light Fight” came with a $50,000 check, but Maria Torres said the money went to paying off credit cards from building the Christmas wonderland that won the competition. The greatest prize, she said, was the trophy they took outside twice a night to show spectators.

“We had people coming from all over, even from other areas in the United States visiting ‘Great Christmas Light Fight’ homes, taking pictures with us like we’re celebrities,” she said. “We were giving out candy canes, like $500 worth of candy canes.”

The couple donated their 32-foot-tall pirate ship to the California Center for the Arts in Escondido and were invited as guests of honor to the opening celebrations, which would have been this Saturday, but the party was canceled because of the pandemic.

Christmas cheer still rings in little ways, like the Torres’ neighbors being inspired to decorate much more compared with years before. The Torres’ adult children tease that their parents’ version of “scaling down” still includes a smiling crab, a 10-foot-tall mermaid, the Grinch, the Flintstones and the 20-foot-tall castle the neighbors love so much.

“Next year I’ll do something on a massive scale,” Juan Torres said, standing near the crab he hoped would soon have a giant submarine to stand on.

Contact Sabrina Schnur at sschnur@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0278. Follow @sabrina_schnur on Twitter.