HOLIDAY LIGHTS: Cotati mother, daughter fill yard with holiday fun

A colorful crowd of inflatable Christmas characters fills Louise and Linda Santero’s Cotati front yard. Candy canes line up in the side yard, and Santa flags wave from porch posts as this mother-daughter team completes the Christmas display.

Behind the white picket fence, adorned with garlands and lights, stand Santa and Mrs. Claus, snowmen and a Christmas tree.

This year, the Santeros added a dog - a Lab wearing a Santa hat - and a red-nosed Rudolph.

“My idea is to create a kind of family,” said Linda, who with her mother has been turning the yard into a bright holiday spectacle for more than 30 years.

The Christmas display, although modest in size, is most striking because it is just one of 10 such exhibits the women create each year.

“We celebrate every holiday,” Louis said. “Christmas, New Year’s, Valentine’s, St. Patrick’s Day, Easter, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, the Fourth of July, Halloween and Thanksgiving.”

Then she turned to Linda and asked, “Did I forget any?”

From pilgrims and leprechauns to witches and eagles, the playful glitz and glitter at the corner of East Cotati Boulevard and Windmill Farms Drive elicits friendly honks and waves from passing drivers.

Some admirers even write thank-you notes.

“I enjoy the fact that other people enjoy it,” Louise said.

“We got a letter just before Thanksgiving from a lady who said she’s been driving by for years, and every time she drives by and sees the decorations they make her smile. That’s what it’s all about for me.”

At 86, Louise has lived in Cotati for 76 years. She and her late husband, Angelo Santero (known as Shorty), met at a town dance. They married in 1947.

His father gave the young couple some land on East Cotati Boulevard across from a feed store where Shorty worked as a truck driver. During his off-hours, Shorty and his brother built the cozy one-story house that has been the Santeros’ home since 1948. That’s where Louise and Shorty raised two daughters and two sons.

“We all went to Cotati Elementary,” said Linda, 64. “I was in the first graduating class at Rancho Cotate High School.”

Today, she works as an office manager and continues living where she always has.

“It makes economic sense to live with my mom,” she said. “And it’s good for her to have me here.”

One neighborhood change since Linda was a kid is the Windmill Farms PUD, built on land her grandfather once owned. The feed store is now a glass company. The family home stands alo

ne, as a cheer-filled holiday vision between Windmill Farms and the railroad tracks.

Linda said it is an all-day job to string garlands along the fence, decorate the windows and lay out the blowups with their tethers and pegs.

She said she tries to refrain from buying new yard decorations, “but I couldn’t pass up the Lab this year, because we have two Labs of our own: Molly and Noel. And who could resist Rudolph?”

Their holiday ritual has a long history. “We were decorating the windows when the kids were all little,” Louise said.

“Back in the ‘50s, my husband got a Styrofoam Santa and reindeer and put them on a guy wire that ran from our antenna down to the fence. It looked like they were climbing the guy wire, going up toward the sky. People were amazed by that.

“Then after he died, Linda started with the blow-ups. We started with a Thanksgiving turkey she bought on the Internet.”

Today, their inflatables include:

A New Year’s baby with top hat, diapers and sash; a Valentine’s Day dog holding a heart; bunnies galore; a bear with an “I Love Mom” sign; an 8-foot-tall eagle; an Uncle Sam; black cats, ghosts and witches; pilgrims and turkeys; and all the Christmas characters.

When not in the front yard, these characters are packed away with other decorations in 18 plastic bins, labeled and stacked in a shed and small barn.

In 2007, Louise and Linda found a gift at their front gate: a box holding three large wooden candy canes and a note that read, “You deserve these because you care enough to decorate.”

It was from Rohnert Park resident Scott Weaver, whose elaborate Cielo Circle holiday extravaganza is nationally known.

When asked what motivates the Santeros’ decorating dedication, Linda lauged.

“It’s a holiday,” she said. “We don’t go camping. We don’t go out or away. But we decorate. That’s what we do on the holidays, and other people like what we do.”

Is your holiday display worth sharing? Add your name, address and photos to our online Holiday Lights Map at bit.ly/1wp0AqY.