A dad who sets up an incredible light display on his house every Christmas is set to close it down after only getting seven visitors this year. Every year, Darren Lucas and his family from Govilon near Abergavenny launch a fantastic Christmas display outside their house as a way to raise money for various charities.
Known to their neighbours as the 'Christmas House', in the past the Lucas family have started getting ready 11 months prior to the festive season by planting Christmas trees in their garden, a log cabin for Santa as well as making room for the towering snowman that sits in their garden.
This year was no exception and the family went about setting up an even bigger and better Christmas display. However, only seven people have visited the house, which has prompted Mr Lucas to consider switching off the display.
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"I've been doing it for 30 years," he said. "My son decided to take over and he has been working so hard on it. We do it as a family because we have autism and we feel like we are not being heard. So every year, we try and raise money and awareness for an autism charity as well as other charities. What's disappointing this year is that we've set it all up but we've only had seven visitors. We've always had an amazing following but just this year nobody has been. We don't know why - we didn't finish it until the second week of December so perhaps the delay caused it. We are self-funded, we do it all ourselves, that's what we do. We just love it."
Although Darren said he was "disappointed" for the family, he was more concerned about the charities they were aiming to fundraise for. This year, the family were aiming to fundraise for Mind, Cat Protection and The League of Friends, which is a charity of volunteers that help in hospitals.
According to Darren, over the last four years the family have been able to raise £20,000 for different charities through the Christmas display of their house. However, this year the fundraising has been "very poor".
"Usually, by now we will have filled 20-30 tins," Darren added. "But at the moment, we are still on the first one, which is sad really. We wanted to close it down. My son, who built it all up, said to me 'I feel like closing it all down'. But I said 'Don't do that, you've worked so hard on this'. We will never give up, we are so passionate about it. We'd love to see more people to come."
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