“I still used to do it, but it was a bugger of a job up there,” he said.

“We used to have sheds and stables and things then.”

Mr Ciszek, his wife Lisa, and their four children moved to Hamilton in 2011, and since then the big house on the corner of Everton and Steel streets has become a must-visit for the scores of Hunter families and couples doing the Christmas-light rounds in Newcastle during December.

Glowing reindeer resting in the front yard, nutcracker soldiers guarding the entrance to the home, and a giant inflatable santa, plus, of course, a lot of lights, have made it one of the region’s most intricate and interesting displays.

As it is, it still takes about two weeks for Mr Ciszek and his family to get their house ready for December.

“I don’t like anything about decorating it I can tell you that,” he said.

“It takes about two weeks to get most of it up and going, it’s a bit of a process.”

Mr Ciszek works in importing and exporting, and is able to get a lot of the displays through his business contacts in China, accounting for some of the display’s uncommon elements like, for example, the inflatable snow globe that has taken up residence in his driveway, and the giant Santa on the lawn.

“I don’t know what I enjoy about it, I like the lights themselves, I like Christmas, and I like the community side of it,” he said.

“The pressure’s on now, people expect me to do it so I have to keep bettering myself.

“I get carried away with projects like this anyway, it’s in my nature.”

Every night at this time of the year the roads around Mr Ciszek’s house are cluttered with foot traffic, and he can often be found mixing with his admirers.

“I don’t know if my wife enjoys it quite as much,” he said.

The Ciszek house was put forward by our readers after a call out for nominations for our interactive Christmas light map. 

One reader said it was “possibly one of the best displays of Christmas lights in Newcastle [and] very popular with the big kids and the small kids”.

It has plenty of competition though. There were 150 entries into the map, Rutherford, Maryland, Windale and Aberglasslyn the most popular.

Earlier in December the Newcastle Herald featured the home of Coleen Praniess, from Warners Bay, who has been dubbed “Mrs Christmas”.