CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — ABC’s the Great Christmas Light Fight comes to Corpus Christi this Sunday at 8 o’clock. The premiere episode features the Bocanegra and Cox families of Corpus Christi. Both have been putting up their Christmas displays for over 20 years.
Family matriarch Pat Bocanegra happily accepted the chance to be part of the holiday festivities.
"We are very excited when we got chosen to do the production,” Bocanegra said.
The show will judge them on their use of lights, designs and of course Christmas spirit. The winner comes away with $50,000. 3News spoke with the shows co-hosts Carter Oosterhouse and Taniya Nayak about what made the Bocanegra’s living nativity scene on Willowbrook, and the Cox family’s Mr. Bill’s Christmas Wonderland over on Hampton Street so special.
"For the Bocanegra family, I remember it was the first time in my life that when we had that lights on moment I was utterly speechless," Nayak said. "Carter, believe it or not I was speechless I welled up with tears and it was actually very very emotional.”
Bill Cox, who began putting up all of the lights and displays outside of his home all those years ago, died earlier this year. Since the show was taped last year, he will be featured.
"Everything here is handmade right here," Cox said. "Right here in the garage I started getting interested in making things move and the mechanics of it. I’m a very bossy leader because I like things done the way I see it in my head and that’s the way it needs to be done."
Oosterhouse said they were really impressed with each families own unique salute to Christmas.
"It’s just bringing that joy to their communities," Oosterhouse said. "Just bringing that warmth to their neighborhood and they do it, they don’t do it for selfish reasons, they do it because they want their neighbors to be happy. Right now in the world we live in this is one of the greatest shows to work on.”
You can tune in to KIII-TV on Sunday evening at 8 o’clock to see if one of these families is able to come away with that $50,000 prize. Even if they don’t, they are still big winners in the eyes of everyone in town.
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