Hilton Head fire station creates beautiful Christmas light display

HILTON HEAD ISLAND, S.C. (WTOC) - It’s no secret that Christmas lights bring a little extra holiday joy to people every year, whether it be in your neighborhood or someone else’s.

“Best time of year, absolutely.”

That’s something we hear a lot during the holidays, especially from people who love the season enough to go all out with lights, lights, and more lights. When you get this far into it.

“Well at this point it’s too big to fail, we can’t stop.”

There’s no turning back.

“I think 10,000 strands was last year and we’re probably around that same number, but it takes a lot of time, energy and effort to put up all these lights.”

As we all know these amazing displays are typically at a house or two, but here on Hilton Head, it’s a firehouse instead.

“We’ve got seven stations around the island. This station is the Christmas station,” Capt. Willie Ferguson said.

Station 3 on the island goes all out, starting their decorating in October and taking nearly two months to complete the whole drive through display.

“It really took off probably around 12 years ago. It started as a competition between the seven stations.

Ferguson, who’s been here for 21 years and captains the station, says it really wasn’t much of a competition.

“All the other stations were like ‘oh, we can’t beat them, so we’re just going to let Station 3 have all of that.’”

He says these lights bring extra smiles into their difficult days.

“We get to see the people that we interact with on an emergency call, we get to see them in a non-emergency situation.”

He said the lights and inflatables will all be up until Jan. 1, so you’ve still got a few days to come out and see them. He says at that point the firefighters at station three will start taking them down strand by strand.

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