In Denver, keeping outdoor holiday light displays up through January isn’t just for lazy or crazy neighbors. 

Katy Strascina, a Colorado native, grew up with Christmas lights dazzling the outside of her house well into January each year. 

Keeping the lights up through the end of the National Western Stock Show, an annual January tradition that brings thousands of people from around the world, was the norm in Strascina’s world. 

The 118th year of the Stock Show runs from Jan. 6-Jan. 21 this year. It’s expected to bring visitors from all 50 states, and some 36 countries, according to Stock Show officials.

Strascina, now the executive director of special events for the City and County of Denver, said the tradition has lasted as long as she’s known and has heard tales from her father, who worked for the city as well, about the mayor encouraging people to keep their lights on in the 1970s, she said. 

“It was just never a question, we’d just keep them up and all of our neighbors did the same thing,” Strascina said. “As a kid, we always went to the Stock Show, so those are like two normal things. There’s Christmas, there’s New Years and then there’s the Stock Show. It was just part of our winter, doing all of those things then keeping our lights up.”

While city officials and even the Stock Show CEO himself are unsure exactly of the tradition’s roots, the history of it goes far beyond the 70s. 

Keli Schmid, a special collections librarian with the 10th Mountain Division Resource Center at Denver Public Library, said the first reference made to the tradition in the city’s archive of stories and documents was in 1922.

The details behind the tradition, however, are vague, she said. 

“The whole thing just evolved and nobody really talked about it or documented it,” Schmid said. 

That year, businesses donated about $1,000 to keep lights up through New Year’s Day, turn them off, then turn them back on for the stock show, Schmid said.

For several years afterward, the tradition of turning the lights off in early January then turning them back on for the duration of the stock show continued.

“It was specifically to kind of dazzle the people who were coming from out of town,” Schmid said. 

The first historical reference to keeping the lights on the entire time without pause until the end of the stock show was in 1951, she said.

Paul Andrews, the president and CEO of the Stock Show, said even the show’s hosts don’t exactly know how or when the tradition began — but said it’s a way to welcome visitors coming from all over the nation and the world.

Andrews, who grew up in the area, has taken part in the tradition his entire life, he said.

“It was one of the first things I was introduced to at my house that we keep our lights up until the end of the Stock Show,” Andrews said. “Back then I thought people would think we were the crazy neighbors, but now it’s not seen that way. It’s seen as respecting our Colorado history with a tradition born in the 20s.”

The Stock Show, which happens each January, is a place where rural and urban America come together at the Stock Show grounds, 4655 Humboldt St., to share ideas and realize that they aren’t very different, Andrews said. 

“The Christmas light tradition is really a way for all of Colorado to celebrate the National Western Stock Show because all 64 counties in Colorado will be attending in one way or another,” he said. “It’s part of the fabric of what Colorado is.”

As far as who the lights stay up to welcome, Andrews said every state in the U.S. will be attending this year as well as people from 35 countries.

Of the 50 states, 48 of them will have exhibitors or rodeo representatives and the other two, Hawaii and Alaska, will have rodeo contestants represented, Andrews said.

People are also attending from 35 countries including China, Japan, Mexico, Australia, Uruguay and Canada, he said. 

Last year, the show saw about 702,000 visitors, Andrews said, calling the show “the most fun you can have in January.”

“Maybe it’s the most fun you have all year, frankly,” he said. 

For a full schedule, tickets, and more information visit nationalwestern.com.