NEW YORK — As a font of indelible folk characters, Christmas beats all other holidays: Santa, Rudolph, Tiny Tim, the Grinch, David Sedaris, you name it. In the Charleston section of Staten Island, there is also a retired Pepsi foreman named Joseph DiMartino, who in 2002 — the year after his wife, Debra Ann, was killed in the World Trade Center attack — began decorating his home in her memory, and to raise money for the pediatric cancer unit at Staten Island University Hospital.
“After that horrific day, people were there for my family,” said DiMartino, 61, who was suddenly raising two young daughters on his own. “So this is my way of giving back.”
He starts the day after Labor Day, with a goal to have everything in place for a soft opening on Thanksgiving. DiMartino declined to say how much he has spent on decorations, but allowed that “you could buy a house” with what he has invested so far. He expects charitable donations this year to be around $40,000.
The display began, as so many things do, simply enough, with a Nativity scene in a manger. But as DiMartino added another piece each year, pretty soon it added up. This year he commandeered part of a neighbor’s lawn to add a mechanical skating rink.
DiMartino said he watches the eyes of the children to figure out what to add next. Already he has to limit the appearance of Santa (spoiler alert: it’s really DiMartino’s friend Ralph, up from Florida) to four days, because otherwise the foot traffic would be too disruptive for the neighbors.
In return, he said, all he asks is that people not block his neighbors’ driveways. It’s not exactly peace on earth and goodwill toward all. But these days it qualifies as a call to our better nature. And lest there be environmental concerns, most of the juice for the display comes from solar panels on the roof. Santa, you see, takes the polar ice caps seriously.
So ho ho ho. It’s been a trying year, filled with spectacles even more unlikely than a carousel suddenly filling a lawn in Staten Island. Every night, after he shuts the display down, DiMartino sweeps the street, where visitors toss the occasional coffee cup. It’s the least he can do, he said.
In that vein: Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good — hey, this is a driveway, you can’t block my driveway.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.