Hyde Park family keeps Christmas magic alive

Christmas past has never been too far from Walter Smietana.

An almost 50-year-old animatronic Christmas display, which was hand-made by Smietana, 69, and his late father, Andrew, at their Hyde Park home, is brought back to life during the yuletide for all to see who pass two of the Smietana homes at First Avenue and Center Street.

There are six lit boxes with moving parts such as Mary rocking baby Jesus and the Three Kings bowing on Smietana's lawn.

The roughly 1-foot-tall moving Christmas characters include Santa and elves as they hammer or saw and a dancing Santa and Mrs. Claus, all topped by a moving, wooden cutout of Santa with his sleigh and reindeer.

The hand-painted wooden figures have a primitive, folk art feel to them.

A Valley News Dispatch story on Dec. 20, 1972, about the Smietana Christmas display noted that the Smietana family spent untold hours over the course of several years to build the displays: “Perhaps the reason neither has counted the hours spent is that neither considered the displays work; rather they have been part of the joy of Christmas.”

The fact that the same Christmas display has been used for decades isn't the whole story: The displays were all hand-made and operated by salvaged parts from washing machines, furnaces — even a gear from a wind-up Victrola.

And the display is still running.

“In this technological age, the design was amazing, given what they did with what they had,” said Smietana's son, Stephen, 39, whose yard across the street from his father's houses the animatronic Christmas display.

“This shows so much thought and ingenuity,” Stephen said. “Not many people could make this happen, especially how they did it back then. It makes me proud.”

As the third-generation steward of the display, Stephen plans to keep up the display for years to come.

“I learn more and more every year,” he said.

In fact, he would like to mechanize the movements of the band in the dancing Santa and Mrs. Claus display, which is not surprising — Smietana is the band leader at Springdale Junior-Senior High School.

The elder Smietana continues to appreciate his father's feat of marvel.

“He had a real good head on him,” said Walter.

Andrew Smietana, the late patriarch of the family, was an emigrant from Budapest who was a coal miner for 35 years and then a carpenter for Hyde Park Foundry.

“He could do anything,” said Walter.

And apparently he did, from carving some of the wood figurines by hand to mechanizing the movements of his Christmas characters. Family members helped build some of the displays, as well as painting and clothing the figurines.

“He should have worked for Walt Disney,” Walter said.

Andrew Smietana dreamed up the display when his wife asked him to make a revolving Christmas tree.

“That wasn't enough,” Walter said.

His father decided on his first animatronic: Santa's workshop.

Andrew Smietana found salvaged parts in two junk yards, and the rest is history.

“He never bought anything,” Walter said. “Everything was hand-made.”

Washing machine gear boxes, a Victrola, old, sturdy coat hangers, and some secret parts were used to create the movement of the characters.

The thrifty ingenuity is evidenced in a display of two moving elves in a house built with numerous milk cartons donated by Smietana's neighbors. The opaque cartons diffuse and pick up the light from a hidden rotating color wheel that was used for an aluminum Christmas tree.

Besides tradition, the Smietanas were influenced by popular culture when the displays were built.

Mrs. Santa is dancing the twist, which was inspired by rock'n'roll and Chubby Checker, according to Walter.

The ringing bell in the church was devised by Smietana, who replicated the sound of a bell with an old hammer hitting a used saw blade.

But after almost five decades, the work is not done: Walter's grandchildren want more reindeer to bring up the count from five, including Rudolph, to the requisite nine reindeer to drive Santa's sled.

And there's a good chance that more reindeer will be added because, according to Walter, “we do this for the grandchildren and for others to see.”

Mary Ann Thomas is a staff writer for Trib Total Media.