Holidays are Francis Clark's hobby.
To celebrate them, the 59-year-old retired banker uses his Towson split-level like a canvas on an artist's easel, a ground on which he can exercise his creativity and have fun at the same time.
This year's Christmas extravaganza includes Santas, snowmen, reindeer, candy canes and Christmas tree lights, and strings of lights on his shrubbery and the eaves of his house on Kenilworth Drive.
Those who pause for a longer look will see a Christmas tree sparkling with more than 1,000 tiny lights and gleaming silvery decorations in the picture window behind moving mechanical figures -- two rotund Santas, a caroler and a toy soldier.
Mr. Clark, whose nickname is "Nuney" but might well be "Mr. Holiday," kept up the tradition this year despite physical limitations imposed by recent cancer surgery.
His storage room is full of Easter bunnies, Halloween witches, Valentine hearts, Fourth of July flags and Thanksgiving turkeys -- but the search for new things never stops. His imposing Halloween display was in place before he entered the hospital, and although Christmas hasn't come yet, Mr. Clark already is looking forward to Valentine's Day. Even though his daughter and two granddaughters are grown, the South Baltimore native said he is so deep into his hobby he can't let go.
The displays aren't the biggest or the most extravagant but they are among the best known in the Towson area because Kenilworth Drive is heavily traveled and people anticipate his efforts.
"Everybody in the neighborhood and for miles around enjoys his displays," said James M. Robertson, 73, Mr. Clark's next-door neighbor. Mr. Robertson, a retired railroad man, said he spends a lot of time outdoors, and people stop to look over the displays. "I tell them I put them up and Mr. Clark is my neighbor. Then I tease him about it," he said.
Mr. Clark, who retired as a vice president of Signet Bank after a career with its predecessor, Union Trust Co., described the weekend shopping marathons that go on year-round with his wife, Jan, who encourages his efforts, or perhaps tolerates them.
The couple roam the area, checking store after store for new decorations -- at the right price.
Consider the life-size Santa resting against the chimney. Mr. Clark said the first one he found cost $60. "I kept looking and eventually found that one -- for $6," he said.
Mr. Clark is plotting his campaign for the after-Christmas sales. While he said he can't estimate how much he has invested so far, "I add $300 to $400 in new stuff every year."
"I almost didn't do it for Christmas this year because of the operation," Mr. Clark told a visitor who found him up a ladder stringing last-minute lights around a window frame. "The doctor told me I wasn't supposed to do this, but . . .
"I love it when people stop to look and take pictures. Sometimes strangers come to the door. I really get a lot of pleasure from it, and I get a warm feeling when I get cards and letters from people, especially from children."
Inside, his handiwork fills every room, particularly the combination family room and kitchen, which is decorated floor to ceiling. There's another tree, this one with Santa-face lights and a Santa Bear that blows soap bubbles. Overhead, scores of tiny Christmas ornaments hang from ceiling tiles. "Actually I like the inside better than the outside this year," Mr. Clark said.
Until this year, he insisted on doing the work himself. This season he allowed his granddaughters and one of their friends to help because of his physical condition. Nonetheless, the perfectionist in him came out.
"I put up some lights and they were wrong, so I had to do it over again," laughed Kristin Jungblut, 21, his elder granddaughter, a junior at Towson State University.
The Christmas lighting adds more than $100 to his electricity bill for the season, but the pleasure is more than worth it, he said.
As his lighting project has expanded, Mr. Clark winds up with the same electrical problem each year: "When I light up, something blows, and my wife says, 'You've done it again.'
"I change things every year and I forget what I have on each line and I put on too much. It's tricky to balance. We never leave the house alone, there's always someone here for fear of fire."
For many years, Mr. Clark said, the family decorated like most others, with a Christmas tree and some lights. Then he began adding to the display until the Arab oil boycott of the early 1970s forced a blackout. Once the crisis passed, Mr. Clark said, a friend who is a commercial artist designed a rooftop "Christmas castle" for Santa Claus.
"It took four people 10 hours to put it up there," he said, "and I told the kids that Santa Claus lived on the roof."
"I believed that for years," Ms. Jungblut said. "We used to go up to the attic to see if he was there."
The castle, which finally wore out, led to bigger things.
"People urged me to decorate for Halloween, then Easter," Mr. Clark said. "It snowballed on me."