Christmas House

Surely you all remember the Klimczuk Christmas House on Jerusalem Avenue. Newsday had a story about it when Mr. Klimczuk died in 1994:

"For as long as anyone can remember in Uniondale, there has always been a Christmas house - the house on Jerusalem Avenue adorned each year with lights and electric candles, a red Santa's mailbox, a wishing well, a sleigh on the roof and Santa's workshop in the back.

And there was always Sam Klimczuk, dressed up like Santa Claus, handing out presents to the children, who lined the street on Christmas Eve. "He had so much stuff it was unbelievable," said Vincent Alexander, Klimczuk's next-door neighbor for 15 years. "He gave you the Christmas spirit. A lot of people say they don't feel the Christmas spirit. But if you lived next door to him, you felt it. " Klimczuk would start decorating right after Thanksgiving and soon the brick house with faded yellow siding would be lit up like a carnival - altar boys, elephants, the Pope, eight Christmas trees, reindeer, a black Madonna, a space shuttle and crew, chirping birds.

And just as the December sun would go down, thousands of lights would turn on. "Thousands of people came," said Jack Chan, chief of auxiliary police in Uniondale. "I think he was the greatest. He was willing to do all this work just to make some people happy, especially young people.' There were so many lights, some of Chan's officers helped Klimczuk rebuild a used Army Reserve generator so he could provide his own juice, Chan said. For the last 30 years on Christmas Eve, Chan and a dozen auxiliary officers directed traffic and kept the lines moving. The lines stretched around the block. Although the traffic sometimes got to be a nuisance and screeching brakes mingled with Christmas music, the house was part of Uniondale's landscape.