AS Christmas appears over the horizon we at The Northern Echo are launching our Ho, Ho Homes competition, celebrating the best festive lights the region has to offer. Matt Westcott speaks to one enthusiast as he prepares for the big switch on

FOR most people, the weeks in the lead up to Christmas mean dragging a somewhat bedraggled tree down from the loft and checking that the 100 or so bulbs are still working.

COMPETITION: Find out more about our Ho Ho Homes competition with details on how to enter. The winner will receive a £250 voucher to spend at Redworth Furniture

Spare a thought, then, for Eric Marshall.

A single Christmas tree languishing in the corner of a living room was never enough for this North Yorkshire pensioner.

Ask Mr Marshall, 76, of Bagby, near Thirsk, how many bulbs there are in his collection and he cannot tell you, but safe to say they run into thousands.

He started out nearly two decades ago with a single display, but he well and truly caught the bug, entering our competition in 2011, and now the lights hang from every conceivable nook and cranny.

“First of all I put a Santa and a reindeer in the front garden and all the kids came and everybody loved it,” he said. “So I thought ‘I’ll do a bit more next year’ and it has blossomed from there.

“I raise a lot of money for the local church. Bus loads come to see them. They come from all over Yorkshire.”

Mr Marshall doesn’t have any experience in the electrical industry, but a City and Guilds qualification from his school days has stood him in good stead.

“It’s a pain sometimes when the bulbs don’t work. But because I have been doing it for so long I mend my own,” he said. “I have Santas on swings, run with little motors, and I will maybe go and get a motor out of a microwave oven and put that in.

“I like making and doing things.”

Mr Marshall likes to reinvent his display each year and this year he will be debuting a new laser attraction.

A railway buff, his favourite designs involve trains and there are half-a-dozen included.

All obviously add to his electricity bill over the winter, but luckily Mrs Marshall likes them as much as he does.

“I am on direct debit so I tend not to have a look,” he said when asked about the cost. “My wife loves it though. We get a lot of people come in the house and have a cup of tea."

So what of those who think such displays are lacking in taste?

“People can have their own ideas, but I know a lot of people do like them, the amount of people I get here,” he said. “During the night they are queuing up the village.”

Mr Marshall’s home has become something of a landmark and not just locally.

So renowned are his Christmas displays that a film crew from Hollywood flew in to get them on tape for a documentary called Wizards of Light.

“The phone rang one night,” Mr Marshall said. “But I have a mate called Trevor who is always pulling my leg about things, so when they said ‘it’s Hollywood here, Tinseltown’, I said ‘you will have to try harder than that to catch me out’ and I put the phone down.

“But then it rang a few minutes later and he said ‘please don’t put the phone down we are quite genuine’.

“He said he would love to come and film the lights after seeing them on the internet. It was lovely having them, they were a right lot of fun.”