Buggs light Metro holiday again

ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) -


After a five-year hiatus, the Bugg lights are returning to Albuquerque and Menaul School, the new home of the Christmas display started nearly 40 years ago.

The Christmas light display that Norman and Joyce Bugg started on the front lawn of their Northeast Heights house became a popular holiday tradition.

The tradition ended because it became too popular.

This is not your traditional holiday display.

This collection includes more than 2,000 lights and dozens of characters that were handcrafted and assembled, many by Norman and Joyce Bugg.

Retired engineers from South Dakota and North Carolina volunteered to help put the display together.  Old pieces had to be refurbished, motors had to be fixed and nobody knew how to put together the display better than the Buggs.

"Like Raggedy Ann and Andy on the teeter-totter and where the Peanut Gang went," Joyce Bugg told KRQE news 13.

The project is so big Menaul School had to build its own Santa's Workshop to store and work on the Bugg lights

Crews started assembling the display Oct. 1.  It will be filled with some new pieces, but also many of the ones the Buggs had when they started the display in 1970.

The giant crowds that gathered and drove by the Bugg's home over the years annoyed some of the neighbors.  The city threatened action, so the Buggs pulled the plug.

"We've had hundreds of people tell us how they used to come to our house," Norman Bugg said.

A short stop at the now-closed Traditions Marketplace between Albuquerque and Santa Fe didn't last either.

Out of 20 applicants Menaul School was selected to become the new home of the collection.

"This is the kind of Christmas thing you come and walk through," Lindsey Gilbert of Menaul School said.  "You just don't drive by and wave."

The Buggs said it's bittersweet not to have holiday cheer on their front lawn, but their name is now symbolic with the holiday and this display.

"It's almost embarrassing because we're not celebrities," Norman Bugg said with Joyce adding, "We're just an old couple that's tried to have happy memories and happy Christmases for everyone."

The Bugg Christmas lights will be turned on the day after Thanksgiving and will be lit every weekend through Dec. 24.

Admission is free but donations will be accepted to help pay the electric bill and to help send Menaul students on a mission.

The school is located at the intersection of Menaul and Broadway NE.