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Last year, for the first time in his life, 66-year-old Jim Ruspi didn't have a Christmas tree in his home.

It had been a tough year for Ruspi. Five years after having a rare sextuple bypass heart surgery and having a cancerous kidney removed, Ruspi had heart surgery again on Dec. 4, 2008, to remove another artery that had become clogged.

His holiday season was spent in and out of hospitals, and even when he was home, he was too weak to search for a tree or to help his wife, Jill, prepare for the annual Christmas Day celebration the Ruspis have at their Laytonsville home every year.

But even as his body's failings prevented Ruspi from celebrating the holiday most dear to his close-knit Catholic family, there was a glimmer of Christmas spirit waiting for Ruspi when he returned from the hospital.

"It was like an airport with all sorts of light on," Ruspi said Monday in his home on Brink Road. "... It reminded me that Christmas is here."

For the past 10 years, Ruspi's daughter Angela Hoffman has paid for a private Christmas decorating service to install lights at her parents' home, knowing her father, once the proud owner of the best Christmas display on the block, no longer could install the lights himself.

Nor can Ruspi even see the Christmas display. Since he was a child, Ruspi could only see out of one eye. The vision in his other eye gradually worsened until about 12 years ago when he was declared legally blind. That's what prompted Hoffman to give her father his annual Christmas gift.

Ruspi can't make out the design or many of the colors within the display, only a blur of pinpoint lights and the contrast of dark and light spots at night. But he knows what's there and he knows the familiar feeling he gets when the lights are turned on for the first time each season.

"He goes through life only with vague impressions of things," Jill Ruspi said. "But he can fill in the blanks with his memories."

On Friday Hoffman and her father arrived at Ruspi's Laytonsville home shortly after the decorating service, Christmas Décor Maryland, had completed this year's display. The Ruspis' display is among the most modest of the roughly 70 displays Christmas Décor Maryland will install this year, said Ted Hall, the owner of the Clarksburg-based franchise of the national Christmas Décor company that began in 1986.

Some of Hall's displays cost as much as $20,000 but he says the Ruspis prove that few of his clients are the lazy or wealthy types that most people may expect.

"It's an emotional sale," said Hall, who bought the Christmas Décor franchise 14 years ago and now has eight employees. "They really want Christmas."

During times of better health, Jim Ruspi's Christmas displays included a Santa Claus and reindeer carved out of plywood and a musical lights display he designed himself (Jim Ruspi has a degree in electrical engineering). It's been difficult to cede control over his house, and his Christmas display, to others who are more capable.

"They always did so much around the holidays," said Hoffman, who lives in Germantown. "To not have the lights wouldn't have been the same."

Jim Ruspi says he's feeling much better this year than last and plans to go out and get a Christmas tree soon, maybe even cut one down with his wife. With two newly born granddaughters, the Ruspis will welcome 17 family members to their home this year, just as they have for the past 30.

But not all of those gatherings have been cheerful.

One year, Jill Ruspi gave birth to one of her sons around Christmas time, but he almost died during child birth. The family spent Christmas that year worrying about his survival, relieved when the newborn was brought home on Dec. 26. When Jill and Jim's other son was 14, he died in a car accident near their home. The first Christmas without him was especially difficult, Jill Ruspi said.

No matter the turmoil, the family always takes solace in knowing that they will all gather around the tree on Dec. 25 every year, a close-knit family celebrating their favorite holiday. There may be times of darkness for Jim Ruspi and his family, but at Christmas, there is always light outside.