A few days before Thanksgiving, Jake Klipsch looked out the window of his central Davenport house to find a striking sight.
His neighbor was already putting up Christmas lights.
“Come on,” Klipsch thought. “I haven’t even finished raking the leaves.”
It was the latest material for an ongoing inside joke within Klipsch’s household: He could never keep up with his neighbor’s Christmas decorations.
“Every year, less and less of my stuff gets up and his house keeps getting better,” Klipsch said. “I could only try to hang in with him.”
In the past, Klipsch has limited the friendly rivalry to comments to his wife and three children, such as “Look at that, Gary has done it again.”
This season, he did anything but keep it a secret.
'I give up'
On a jog through his central Davenport neighborhood, Klipsch’s mind was running through Christmas decorating ideas. He thought: “How many years can I put the lights in the exact same place? How can I make my house stand out?”
And, just like that, a new -- more minimalist -- strategy popped into his head.
“I was thinking, ‘I give up, you win,’” Klipsch said.
He decided to proclaim that thought to anyone who passed by his family’s home.
“I remember the moment well,” he said. “I ran home and I told my wife, ‘I got to start doing this now.’”
Klipsch drove to a nearby hardware store to pick up the necessary supplies, including a 4-foot piece of plywood and a string of white Christmas lights.
Klipsch then got to work in his backyard, sketching out the letters "meticulously duct taping” lights in place.
The finished product: A small sign emblazoned with the words “They Win” and an arrow pointing to his neighbor’s house.
The next night, he revealed his sign to the world, but not before clearing it with Shocker.
“The night before he put the sign up, he comes over and he goes, ‘I’m not here to get you angry,’” Shocker said.
Shocker’s reaction?
“I just laughed. We’re not in competition or anything like that,” he said. “It’s just a funny thing.”
'How does he do it?'
Klipsch, a Davenport native, and his wife, Leslie, moved into their house in 2007 after living for a few years in a small Chicago apartment, where there “was not much of an opportunity to be creative.”
With their own house and front yard, Klipsch said he finally had an outlet for his festive decorating ideas. He littered their space with lights, even if it meant climbing 15 feet up onto the roof.
“I went a little Griswold, initially,” he said, referencing the popular “National Lampoon's Vacation” holiday movie series featuring a family known for their own over-the-top Christmas celebrations. “I was dedicated for the first few years, for sure.”
Over the years, it became “more of a chore.”
It didn’t seem that way for Shocker, however.
“His house is always the star of the street,” Klipsch said. “He’s one of those neighbors that is much better at making his house and yard always look beautiful. I'm always like, 'How does he do it?'”
Shocker said he has enjoyed decorating his house each Christmas season for the 16 years he has lived there.
On one hand, Shocker said 1900s houses such as his “scream for attention.”
“Just the way these houses are built and designed,” he said, “they just need to be decorated up this time of year.”
Shocker, who is retired, also said he takes “pride” in getting the lights up.
“It fills my holiday spirit,” he said.
'Going viral'
A few days after Thanksgiving, Klipsch posted a photo of the “They Win” sign on Facebook and wrote: “My neighbor, Gary, always has the best Christmas light displays. I can’t keep up. This year, I just decided to admit defeat.”
He ended the post with a special hashtag: #merryxmasgary.
More than 180 people “liked” the post.
“This wins the Internet,” wrote one commenter.
News of the festive sign reached beyond Klipsch’s Facebook friends.
Over the next week, Klipsch, who is the principal at Mid City High School, said several of his coworkers had seen photos of his house via separate posts on social media and told him, “You’re kind of going viral.”
“I was surprised other people had found it,” he said. “It’s way more of a response than I thought.”
Klipsch has an idea of why the post resonated with so many.
“Maybe it’s’ a situation others have dealt with,” he said. “You see these amazing houses and you’re jokingly like, how do they keep up with it?”
