Editor's note: This story was originally written in 2022. We're re-sharing it in 2023 because the Winterhaven Festival of Lights is back for the season. The midtown festival runs 6-10 p.m. daily through Dec. 25. Find more info here.
The three weeks leading up to the Winterhaven Festival of Lights are daunting.
It’s when Jim Tofel starts to pull holiday decorations out of his 500-square-foot garage, two-thirds of which is packed almost ceiling to floor with Christmas lights, life-size cutouts of Disney princesses and a whole lot of extension cords.
Tofel has lived in the very charming Winterhaven neighborhood for 20 years, serving as neighborhood president for four of those. His and his wife Allyson's home is one of the first that greets you through the annual Winterhaven Festival of Lights — the holiday tradition that many Tucsonans have known and loved for more than seven decades.
It takes the Tofel family about three weeks to set up, and then about a week to put everything away. Some people wait until closer to the festival's start date to set up. A lot of folks spend time hand-making custom decorations for the festival that Tofel thinks is taken up a notch each year. And yes, Winterhaven residents pay their own electricity bills, even if the cost spikes due to all the twinkling lights.
Allyson Tofel helps her husband, Jim, as he screws in a stand for a cutout as part of the "Princess House" decoration in the Winterhaven neighborhood on Dec. 8, 2022.
Tofel tries to stay home during the two weeks the festival runs (though planning ahead of time when he does have to leave for the evening, for events like University of Arizona basketball games), getting home before it starts and staying through the duration of the night to say hello to visitors.
He typically lights the fire pit and watches as people pass by, many of whom tell him “thank you.” He’s proud to live in Winterhaven.
“We’ve seen at least a dozen people get engaged in front of our house,” he says. “There’s a lot of families who have told us that each year, they take pictures of their kids in front of the princesses to use it as a guide to see how their kids have grown over the years.”
“It’s so much work but it’s so worth it.”
Jim Tofel, left, receives help from his daughters, Lexi, middle, and Carlee, as he sets up the "Princess House" in the Winterhaven neighborhood on Dec. 8, 2022.
100 zoo animals and 20 Disney princesses
Tofel's dad lived in the neighborhood in 1952 — a time when the trees were shorter and the festival wasn’t nearly as large.
“The trees back then were a lot smaller, 10-15 feet tall instead of 50 feet tall, so it was much easier to set up back then,” Tofel says. “But even then, my dad said he did a live nativity every night, so him and the half a dozen kids every night would get together and set up a live nativity.” That’s something Tofel would like to do one day — maybe when he’s retired.
Tofel and his family moved into Winterhaven in November 2002, when they had two daughters and a third on the way. Because they moved in so close to the holidays, they settled on simply stringing up some lights. But the following year, he asked the girls how they wanted to decorate, and a princess house was the dream.
Tofel made it happen.
The family ripped out pages of a coloring book, then scanned and projected them to create life-size cutouts that they hand-painted.
“Every year or two, we would add one,” he says. “I think now we’re up to almost 20 different boards total, so it’s continued to grow.”
Eventually, the Tofel family moved internally to the home they now reside in on Christmas Avenue, right at the main entrance of the festival. He made a this-only-really-makes-sense-for-Winterhaven kind of deal with the seller — “He had to leave me his Christmas decorations.”
Visitors admire the lights and animals in the "Winterhaven Zoo" during opening night in 2017.
The previous owner had started the Winterhaven Zoo, the home where the front yard is filled with illuminating animals. Tofel buys a couple new ones each year — and he’s since collected about 100 of them.
The Tofels also own a second home in Winterhaven, right next door to the zoo house. It’s a home for Tofel's now college-age daughters, and a home probably for his in-laws in the future. It’s the home where the Disney princesses still reside.
“When I was young, we would come through (the neighborhood) and (my dad) would tell me stories of things he did here,” Tofel says. “I still think this is the greatest neighborhood in Tucson, especially in the sense of community and knowing your neighbors. We do a lot of things here besides the Festival of Lights as a community that lets us get to know each other.”
The festival is the result of a lot of residents, volunteers and companies who work together, Tofel says. There’s Tucson Electric Power who wraps the trees with glowing lights, there’s Sunbelt who donates a manlift to Tofel, there are the barricade companies and all the folks who help keep the event safe. Although it's free to attend, the price to put it on definitely adds up.
In a symphony of bucket trucks, Tucson Electric Power field workers untangled lights to hang on the tallest trees lining the streets of the Winterhaven neighborhood on Thursday, Dec. 1, 2022, for the 73rd Winterhaven Festival of Lights.
While decorating is voluntary, the majority of residents participate — something Tofel loves to see.
“It’s a free event and everybody’s happy and in a good mood,” he says.
“There’s a lot of young families now who are excited about it — like I was when I first moved here,” he says.
Welcome to Western Haven
Hilari Ross Johnson moved into Winterhaven in 2020, drawn in by the charm, and to be closer to family who also live in the neighborhood. It was also a plus to be right across the street from Danny's Baboquivari Lounge, her and her husband's favorite bar.
“Literally every time I say I live in Winterhaven, people are like, ‘Wow, that's so cool,’” she says.
Dubbed Western Haven, her home features decorative saguaros, bales of hay, rope and cowboy hats. The plan is to add more to the setup as years pass.
Ross Johnson is also co-owner of Creative Kind, a north-side shop carrying all kinds of Tucson-themed goodies. She's a fan of the West, you could say. Her husband, Danny, is, too.
“We kinda wanted to go off of the Arizona Western theme to kinda bring that ‘traditional Tucson’ into the neighborhood,” she says.
Last year was Hilari Ross Johnson's first year experiencing the Winterhaven Festival of Lights. She dubs her home "Western Haven."
Her first year living in Winterhaven, the COVID-19 pandemic canceled the festival. Last year, though, Ross Johnson finally got the full experience.
“It's interesting having the experience of going to Winterhaven before we lived there and after,” she says. “I think before we lived there, it seemed really big, like we weren't going to be able to see everything. When you don't know the streets, it seems so much bigger than when you live there and walk the neighborhood every single day, if not twice a day.”
Sometimes it's overwhelming — after all, hundreds of thousands of people flock to the midtown neighborhood each year. And driving through the crowds of people can be a challenge if she gets home after 6 p.m., though she doesn't live on the main strip so it isn't as big of an issue. But Ross Johnson likes having a festival right outside her door.
She gets to enjoy the festival, too, taking nightly walks through the neighborhood and looking at the lights just like the rest of us. But then she'll come home and turn on the TV, with a big window looking into the living room, all while people are standing outside taking photos of her decorations, commenting on their love for the Western theme.
“It's this whole experience of being on display, but not really,” she says. “It's really fun and feels really special. I think it's a fun experience to make people happy.”
