In his 44 years of decorating his home for Christmas on Hampden’s Miracle on 34th Street, Bob Hosier has learned a few things.
“No one on the planet is as crazy as we are,” Hosier said.
Perhaps a debatable pronouncement, but in this context, it is hard to disagree. Some residents take months, others mere hours to decorate their homes but the overall effect is one that inspires awe, cheer, and community. Thousands flock to the block for the month of December to revel in the brightness of the displays, and it shows no signs of slowing down, much to Hosier’s surprise.
IN THE BEGINNING…
Hosier, who works in transportation at Loyola University, began decorating his parents’ house in northeast Baltimore when he was 10 years old. He moved to his home on 34th Street in Hampden in 1981, and over the years he admits to getting “a little crazier than most people with it.” In 1991, the Maryland State Lottery contacted him, wanting to include his house in a commercial, and the rest is Miracle on 34th Street history.
“That aired on a Wednesday night, and that weekend, nobody could get in or out of Hampden,” Hosier told Baltimore Fishbowl in a phone call. “I mean, this neighborhood was locked up. Everybody came to see the lights.”
William Donald Schaefer paid him a visit to honor his efforts, and his neighbors got into the spirit of becoming more than just the typical neighborhood street at Christmastime.
Hosier explained that nobody on the block is required to participate in the decorating, and everyone operates independently of one another in terms of how they decorate.
TO BUY OR NOT TO BUY?
Hillary Strilko, who is Jewish, has lived on 34th Street for about 15 years, and when looking at the house with a realtor, had not registered the significance of the location. The realtor said, “You know what block this is, don’t you?” Once she realized, she was all in.
“It was fun, the idea to get to decorate, because I don’t really decorate for Hanukkah,” Strilko told Baltimore Fishbowl in a phone call. “So, you know, I just thought it was really fun and that it must be a fun block to live on. If everybody does all this for Baltimore, they must be nice neighbors to be around.” She owns “The Dog House.”
In 2019, Jelytza Padro’s now-wife bought the house on 34th Street where they both live now. They did not realize it was the Miracle on 34th Street block until they arrived for the tour and were immediately hesitant.
“It was a very much, oh no, I didn’t realize it was on this block,” Padro told Baltimore Fishbowl in a phone call. “They were very hesitant of touring because they were scared they were going to love it, and then they would end up on 34th Street, and then they did end up loving it.” Their house is now known lovingly as “The Dinosaur House.”
DECORATIONS/THEMES
Hosier’s home is the first on the block, and impossible to miss, but it is not “themed,” per se. He begins preparing for Christmas decorations right after the Fourth of July holiday but does not put up anything until after Halloween.
“I have enough decorations do about six houses, so I’ll put up some stuff or take down certain things you can’t change because of the nature of the building you’re decorating,” Hosier said. “But I’ll change things around… My daughter likes the Grinch, so I put that in there. I have the dolls that move, the animated dolls up on the porch. I probably got 200 of them. I’ve got under my porch a train garden that has ‘It’s a Wonderful Life.’”
Strilko’s first year in her home was difficult at the holidays because her beloved dog had cancer. From Thanksgiving through January, she was traveling with him back and forth to University of Pennsylvania for treatments.
“Two of my neighbors, who are amazing friends, they’ve since moved from the area, helped me just get some things up, because I wasn’t really here,” Strilko said.
The following holiday season she decorated her porch with Hanukkah decorations, and her lawn with a “Hon” theme. Many of the Hanukkah decorations have stopped working and she has found them hard to replace. Sadly, also, her dog, Roo, had passed away. So, she decided to channel the spirit of Judaism’s concept of tikkun olam (healing the world) in memory of Roo, and her home is now “The Dog House”.
“I [wondered], how can I use this to help make the world a better place?” Strilko said. “Because kind of you have a little bit of platform with all these people coming by your house, I decided to do something in honor of Rue and basically have a dog-themed house with a sub-theme of adopting and not buying pets.”
She began giving out hot chocolate and asking for donations for various local animal shelters, from small rescues that no longer exist to BARCS. When COVID hit, she stopped because she was worried about exposure to that many people while her elderly mother was sick. (Her mother passed away in September 2025.) Over the seven or eight years Strilko collected funds, though, she estimates she raised over $20,000 for 10 different rescues and shelters.
Generally, Strilko says it takes about a day to complete her decorations, and she puts them up in the beginning of November.
Padro said that in 2019, the couple’s first Christmas on the block, the holiday snuck up on them. They bought random lights and threw them up on the house. It was not coordinated or pretty, but it was light. The following year COVID hit, and the neighborhood questioned if it would do the lights display at all. Eventually, residents decided to post signs cautioning visitors to distance, and Padro and her partner put masks on the random assortment of decorations they’d bought.
By 2021, they were married and Padro was living in the house, and they decided to choose a theme.
“I personally wanted something a little bit non-denominational,” Padro said. “I was a Baltimore City public school teacher at the time, and I wanted something that kids will like.”
They sought the wise counsel of her godson, Georgie, who was four years old. He immediately directed them to go with dinosaurs, so that became their theme from that point until today. Luckily for them, the internet was filled with dinosaur-themed holiday decorations, so they held dinosaur Christmas sweater parties, they have a 13-foot inflatable dinosaur they inflate inside their house first to make sure it works (they lie it down on its side), and their house is decorated inside and out with dinosaurs.
Padro and her wife put up their lights in October, because they are LED smart lights that are changeable with an app. So, the lights are used for Halloween and Christmas. Adding the inflatables and other outside holiday decorations takes them around 6 to 8 hours one day before Thanksgiving.
ELECTRICAL LOAD
Because of the age of the homes on 34th Street, electricity is the first question that comes to mind for many. Hosier put in an additional electrical panel to accommodate the load. He said many of the homes have been refurbished and updated, including their electrical systems. That is the case with Strilko’s home, which was part of the appeal for her.
Her decorations run primarily on batteries, which are not very expensive. She admits replacing decorations can add up, but generally she is not terribly concerned with cost. She uses battery-powered lights and decorations because even though her electrical wiring is updated, she still worries about the danger.
“We all have all these lights everywhere, you know,” Strilko said. “I hope everyone’s being safe about how they’re displaying them. A lot of my lights are battery lights, because I don’t really trust the wiring.”
As for other adaptations, Strilko made sure her home had a parking pad because the holiday displays make it impossible to park on that street in December. She admits to having to change habits a bit in December because of how difficult nighttime parking is.
“You can’t order Domino’s to your house at night the month of December,” Strilko said. “You know, there’s little things that you don’t think of…. Any kind of delivery is going to be difficult on our block, which has the crowds of people.”
OUTSIDE INVOLVEMENT
BGE gives residents no discounts, and the city provides no services. The only government coordination that ever occurred was when police provided barricades.
“The only thing the police department told me was that they brought me down a bunch of barricades, and they said, ‘Look, when you feel it becomes a public safety issue, block the street off. Other than that, do whatever you want.’” Hosier said.
A SENTIMENTAL ENDEAVOR
Anyone questioning Hosier’s or the neighborhood’s motives will get shut down quickly. He did not even want payment for the Maryland Lottery commercial and only accepted it because the Maryland Lottery was legally obligated to pay anyone who participated in the filming.
None of the residents revealed anything about how much they spend on either electricity or decorations. Hosier has had plenty of people offer him money. People have sent him checks and he sends them back. For him and his neighbors, it is not about the money. It’s about the light.
“When I tell people, because they do, they get sentimental, they want to give you some money, [I tell them], ‘Take the money, buy yourself a string of lights and put on your house,’” Hosier recounted. “Even this neighborhood that was very dark when I started this, and this is the 44th year I’ve decorated this street myself, but the neighborhood is getting brighter and brighter with more and more houses that decorate.”
HANUKKAH HOUSE
“It was kind of fun when I first moved here, because I don’t think there were other Jewish people,” Strilko said. “I used to always joke, ‘I’m the Jewish girl on the Christmas block,’ but now we have quite the Hanukkah representation.”
Strilko is referring to the Hanukkah House, home of Joshua Lamont and his wife, Corey. Lamont bought his house in 2017, and notably, his experience not been the same as his neighbors’. He told The Associated that every year he has lived in the house, he has experienced some sort of antisemitic attack.
“Some can be cleaned up with a power washer,” Lamont told The Associated. “Some need to be replaced like decorations and whatnot. It’s saddening. I don’t know if I’d say surprising.”
The first year he owned the house, antisemites painted swastikas on his steps and his decorations. Another year at the 7-Eleven, a person who lived in the neighborhood accosted him while he was wearing his Hanukkah sweater. Lamont said he got a lot of support, though, from The Associated and from the community. They’d considered no longer decorating their house, but that show of community support helped them decide to continue. Corey, who is not Jewish, also convinced him that if they stopped, it meant capitulation to the antisemites. That is the opposite of what Hanukkah means to Jewish people.
Things got worse after October 7, 2023.
“There were smashed watermelons left in the yard. A note slipped under the doormat. I think the first line was, ‘When you die, I hope you never know peace.’ I immediately just ripped it off and threw it in the trash.”
Lamont knows they have made the right decision to represent Judaism publicly and proudly in the current atmosphere of open antisemitism. A young girl visiting their display confirmed it as he was heading into his house.
“She asked, ‘Do you live here?’” Lamont recalled. “I said yes. And she said, ‘I love your house. I’m Jewish. It means so much that I can come here and see something that’s ours.’”
RECENT FIRES
Some flames are not of the welcome kind. Two major fires very close to the Miracle on 34th Street block have captured the attention of Baltimore. One happened at The Castle in November and the other at Falkenhan’s Hardware store in December. Both were determined to be accidental electrical fires.
“I’ve known Debbie a lot of years,” Hosier said, referring to Falkenhan’s owner. “I’ve known her since her father was alive and when she decided to open the store, so, yeah, it’s like losing a friend, but Debbie’s resilient. She’ll be back in about three, four months, so maybe even faster than that, because I don’t think the damage inside the building was as extensive as some might think it is, but I don’t see her being down that long.”
Strilko finds it “eerie” that the Castle and Falkenhan’s fires happened so close together in time and geography. It feels too close to home to her, quite literally.
FUTURE IS BRIGHT
After 44 years, Hosier is optimistic about the way neighbors continue to embrace the tradition of beaming light and decorations out into the community at the holidays, and he hopes it spreads.
“I’m very surprised that a younger generation has come in and have done what they did to this street, because I really didn’t think it would make it,” Hosier said. “So, I’m very impressed by that.”
“Just show a little effort there, and the neighborhood’s gotten very bright in the last, I’d say, 10 or 12, years, which is great, because if we just drifted into the scenery as neighborhoods are decorated like when I was a kid, that would be absolutely fantastic,” Hosier said.
