(From left) Doug, Riley, Tara and Scott Krohn in front of their Walton Park home (Photo courtesy Tara Krohn)
“There’s something about light,” Tara Krohn says thoughtfully. “There’s just something about light that makes people feel warm and cheerful.”
Krohn would know; she is something of an expert on light. Specifically, tacky holiday lights. She and her husband, Doug, live on Queensgate Road in Midlothian’s Walton Park neighborhood — home of Sports Backers’ annual CarMax Tacky Light Run, this year scheduled for Saturday, Dec. 9 — and they have been enthusiastic Christmas decorators for “a long, long time.”
Tara and Doug met as students at James Madison University, where he and his roommate decorated their rental house. “I knew I was marrying into this,” she says. The couple first joined the local tacky light circuit when they lived on Patterson Avenue, and their display only grew when they moved to Walton Park in 2004.
The family, including daughter Riley, 17, and son Scott, 14, spends about 40 hours decorating each year, beginning in early November and working a couple hours each night until their “grand illumination” the Sunday after Thanksgiving. The kids do “as much, if not more” than the adults: Scott has claimed a particular tree (“none of us are allowed to help him with it”), while Riley makes one or two new hand-cut and -painted wooden cutouts for Doug’s December birthday each year, inspired by a cutout that’s been in the family since the 1950s. “So there’s a lot of tradition,” Krohn says. “Every single piece has a story to it or has a meaning to it.”
That enthusiasm is what drew Jon Lugbill, executive director of Sports Backers, to choose Walton Park for a new race event in 2012. A few years earlier, he had realized the abundance of tacky light displays were “one of those very Richmond things that everybody gets really excited about around the holidays,” according to Nan Callahan, the nonprofit’s public relations and communications manager, and he decided to plan an event around them.
Participants in the 2022 Tacky Light Run (Photo courtesy Sports Backers)
After scouting a number of neighborhoods, Lugbill found Walton Park, which checked all the boxes for a race: plenty of decorated houses, streets that could easily be closed for a few hours for the event, a nearby area to host the start and finish, and a new region to expand the growing organization’s reach. Callahan says Walton Park’s neighborhood association was “immediately excited about the event and really game for it. We got really lucky in that regard.”
The Tacky Light Run is unique among Sports Backers’ array of races, which include the iconic Ukrop’s Monument Avenue 10K and the Richmond Marathon. For one thing, it’s a 6K (3.7 miles) and includes a detour through a cul de sac — Walton Park’s Dawnridge Court is known as Christmas Court in December. Callahan says the event isn’t timed (“it’s more of a fun run”) and at least half the participants walk, some pushing strollers, which aren’t allowed at other Sports Backers events. And, of course, the run — or walk — happens at night, so participants can appreciate the full glory of the light displays.
Participants start and finish at Mid-Lothian Mines Park, which Sports Backers transforms into the “North Pole” for the evening. “We go big on the start line. It is over-the-top tacky,” Callahan says. “We are on-site for the entire week, adding decorations to the park and to the course … and we strap every light you can find on this giant star structure. It gets kind of wild. There's candy canes, flamingos — just tons of stuff.” The North Pole after-party includes themed photo props provided by race sponsor CarMax (“They love this event, they love being a part of it,” Callahan notes), a DJ, hot chocolate and food vendors.
Photo courtesy Sports Backers
Out on the course, it’s one big costume party, complete with prizes and a cookie stop. At the very least, Callahan says, participants wear “Christmas light necklaces; antlers; light-up Santa hats; ugly, tacky sweaters.” She has seen runners dressed as the cast of “The Grinch Who Stole Christmas,” a group who built a sleigh to portray “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” and even a gingerbread house costume. “I think this is what makes it such a fun walking event. You can’t really run in a gingerbread house costume,” Callahan says with a laugh, “and even if you can, people are going to want to slow down and take pictures with you and look at your costume.”
Plus, she says, “The neighborhood really comes out hard.” Families decorate their driveways and host bonfires, live bands, selfie stops and refreshments. Awards for the neighborhood include “Overall Tackiest,” “Most Likely to Blow a Fuse,” and “Best & Loudest Block Party.”
From the homeowners’ point of view, Krohn says, “The Tacky Light Run brings the entire neighborhood together. It brings everybody out of their homes. … I’m known for yelling at the runners to ‘Slow down, take it all in, get your money’s worth.’ I’ve never quite understood why people run it, because there’s so much to see. It’s a feast for your eyes.
“I just love seeing the costumes and the creativity and the positivity,” she continues. “And it is the greatest compliment when a group of people stops and they want to get a selfie in front of your house or take a picture of your house. It means the world, because so much heart and soul have been invested into it, time and energy, and they’re basically giving that gift back to us by appreciating it.
“It’s the best night of the year.”
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