While the holiday season is over and through for the city of Albuquerque, for one house in the Northeast Heights, ringing in the new year marks only a brief break before preparations begin for next December.
The Gronager House, so named by the family who lives there, hosts a large-scale musical light show that runs every evening from the end of November to the beginning of January. The house has a guestbook on the sidewalk for signatures and, most importantly, a donation box and QR code to support the National Wounded Warrior Project and Cancer Services of New Mexico.
For 25 years, John Gronager, father and engineer, has custom-built and programmed the fantastical light show, and it has grown spectacularly. When it first began, using only traditional Christmas lights, programming songs to the synchronized lights took up to 20 hours for just 1-2 minutes. Today, with 12 synchronized computers, that time frame has shrunk. It takes a little over an hour per song, allowing the show to include 36 songs in 2024 and 19 songs in December 2025.
The idea to use the light show as an attraction to gather donations was the Gronager’s goal “right from the start,” said John in an interview. While some charities have come and gone since the light show first began, donating has remained a consistent tradition. John emphasized the importance of donations to the project. He emphasized that all proceeds from the light show are donations, and the Gronager family does not claim any of them.
Over the years, the holiday show has donated to various charities, but has consistently supported the National Wounded Warrior Project and Cancer Services of New Mexico. The Gronager’s chose these charities because of how close to home they are. NWWP supports thousands of New Mexican veterans every year, and Cancer Services of NM is very local, affecting many families in Albuquerque, and was started by one of the Gronager’s neighbors.
The entire set-up is homemade, and volunteers from the charities and the surrounding community help assemble it. “This particular version is 45 thousand lights,” John said. “It grows every year.”
The Gronager House website (gclightshow.com) provides an overview of how the light show is built, a list of songs for the year, and links to the charities they are donating to.
Since the pandemic, donations have been on the lower end, with fewer people out and about looking at lights during the holiday season. However, John said that 2025 was already seeing an uptake in numbers, and the Gronager House will continue to create that holiday magic for those who get to see it.
