Joy of Christmas

He told his wife he was not going to hang Christmas lights this year.

The cords, light bundles and props that fill a quarter of the basement would stay packed for the winter. So would the 20-foot snowmen made of plywood; the arches that curved over the driveway; the light-up replica of the Mill Mountain Star.

Raymond Jones just wasn’t in the mood.

In the past, Christmas started in August. That’s when the phone calls with his mother began. From his home in Boones Mill and hers in Baton Rouge, La., they began planning strings and scenes that would cover Jones’ 3 acres with roughly 130,000 lights.

They did this together for at least 14 years, a ritual that began with phone calls stretching from summer till fall and ended with his mother visiting for Christmas, followed by shopping trips each Dec. 26 _ collecting discounted lights.

Little did Jones know, Christmas 2005 would be his mother’s last. Cathy Jones-Whorley died in March.

And as humid summer days cooled and autumn neared, inching toward his first Christmas without her, Jones told his wife, Joyce, he was going to let the property stay bare.

Then, one mid-November night, Joyce Jones drove home and found her husband stringing cords around the fences.

And she knew he was all right.

On a bitter December evening _ the kind of cold that can make toes hurt _ Jones, 40, stood atop a spool wound with lights like a giant bundle of thread.

Plastic candy canes hung from the bed of his Toyota pickup as he strung a star from a light-up stick figure’s arm.

“What do you think?” he asked his wife, who stood watching.

He started decorating a month later than usual, so the display is not quite as grand. Still, tall stick figures stand like bookends on either side of a sign wishing the troops Merry Christmas. A smiley face with the words “Ho Ho Ho” rests on the hillside behind them. Off to the side, flowers and butterflies bloom like a scene from a child’s Lite-Brite _ only this garden is circled by red, glowing candy canes.

With his mother gone, Jones’ mop-haired Yorkie, Sebastian, follows him as his only companion as he spends nights and weekends perfecting the display.

His mother lived in Louisiana with his brother and two sisters. Because they saw her all year long, Jones thought it was only fair he got her at Christmas. He bought her a plane ticket to Virginia each December _ her annual present.

Mother and son had something special, Joyce Jones said.

There was a wood shop in the back of her mother-in-law’s house, plus stories about them building manger scenes together. Jones-Whorley called for updates each fall when her son began decorating. When he sent her presents of tools, saws, nuts and bolts, she got genuinely excited _ just like him.

It was Christmas tradition since Jones and his wife began their life together, when they lived in a house with a 50-by-50-foot yard on Manassas Drive in Roanoke County. Jones and his mother covered the property with so many lights, the lawn literally glowed.

There are pictures of Jones-Whorley standing beside her son’s Christmas displays, snapshots of her riding four-wheelers across the land.

But when she visited for Christmas last year, something was wrong.

She came with what she thought was a bad cold she’d contracted about a month earlier.

Back home in Louisiana, she saw a doctor in January, who diagnosed the lung cancer.

By March, at 59 years old, Jones-Whorley was gone.

Joyce Jones makes her husband come inside for dinner each night. He will even be outside on Christmas Day, walking the property, tweaking the displays, replacing burned-out lights.

While he told his wife he wasn’t going to set up the display, Jones knows his mother would be upset if he didn’t.

This is something she liked doing each December. With or without her, he likes it, too.

He promised more lights next year. He already added a Santa-hat-wearing dragon and a dog with a wagging tail to his light-up collection.

On this December night cold enough to freeze toes, Jones is just about ready to go inside. He gazes at a car that slows in front of his house on Back Creek Road. Holding little Sebastian, Jones waves as onlookers take in the lights.

But when his wife looks at the display, she sees something else _ more than the light-wrapped fences, candy canes and illuminated horses galloping among cactuses. She sees her husband and his mother, working on this all together.

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