Sharing a Christmas tradition

When Shonna Ilgenfritz was younger, it was easy to explain where she lived in Spring Garden Township.

“I live, you know, where the Christmas decorations are,” she’d say.

In 1970, Ilgenfritzes moved across the street from the elaborate light display local dentist Robert Pfaltzgraff had had set up on his Country Club Road lawn for maybe 20 years.

The next year, the Ilgenfritzes took over the display, which is made up of old-fashioned lights, a wooden sleigh with eight reindeer, an army of toys and a 6-foot-tall mechanical Frosty the Snowman.

But Frosty the Snowman is saying goodbye to Country Club Road for good.

Shonna, now a 49-year-old York city resident, helped her parents, Joyce and Morgan Ilgenfritz, and several of their grandchildren pack up the display outside their home on Saturday for the last time.

Morgan Ilgenfritz recently had his knee replaced, leaving him unable to put up the decorations on his own. Last year, C1 nine of his grandsons came from nearly two hours away to help. But he and his wife decided that maybe it was time to call it quits.

“We are getting older,” he said. Though they have had several offers to buy the display, the couple doesn’t want to sell.The lights belong to York County, they said.

“It’s a landmark,” Joyce Ilgenfritz, 70, said.

They hope to donate the display to Rocky Ridge County Park in memory of Pfaltzgraff.

York County Department of Parks and Recreation officials are considering whether they can give it the “tender loving care” it needs, said Jeri Jones, special events and program coordinator for the department.

“It’s certainly a very historical piece,” he said.

Pfaltzgraff, who died in 1975, built what they call the “children’s Christmas wonderland” from toys his patients would bring him. A rubber Popeye doll, Morgan Ilgenfritz’s favorite, rides a merry-go-round with toy animals, next to a Ferris wheel populated by old bubble bath bottles emptied by the dentist’s patients.

“This was built because he loved children,” but had none of his own, Morgan said.

The Ilgenfritzes took over when “Doc’s” heart began giving him trouble, they said. He told them to put it in their yard since he could see it better from there anyway.

Morgan Ilgenfritz, a 73-year-old retired electrician, was the only person Pfaltzgraff ever let beyond the lock and key that secured the elaborate system of pulleys, leather belts and motors that he crafted to run the display.

He’s taken over the same care that Pfaltzgraff gave the display, watching as his grandsons carefully wiped each piece down before packing it away in boxes Saturday.

The family said they’ll be sad to see the display go, to no longer have visitors drive slowly by their home in December and meander up to the decorations.

“I’ve really gotten to meet a lot of our neighbors through the decorations,” Joyce Ilgenfritz said.

One of their daughters asked if they could donate everything but Frosty, and give the snowman to her.

“Everybody would like to have Frosty,” Morgan Ilgenfritz said. But he wants the whole set to stay together.