I install Christmas lights in the Hamptons. People think of it as a summer haven, but to me, it comes alive during the holidays.

• Jim Frankenback is the founder of Southampton Christmas Lights in Southampton, New York.
• Frankenback's business installs lights and other displays at homes, churches, and firehouses.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Jim Frankenback, the founder of Southampton Christmas Lights. It has been edited for length and clarity.

When I was younger, my family owned a garden center in the Hamptons. Each Christmas, we'd not only decorate the trees in the garden center, but we would also decorate people's homes.

It was in my early 20s — when I was on a job helping the florist — that I saw how other people celebrated Christmas in the Hamptons. The owner wanted to hang a fresh holly wreath in every window of her home, which she would spritz with water every day. It was the first time I realized how much money people were willing to spend on this special time of year.

In 2000, I was looking for ways to make money during the off-season for our family landscape contracting business

Landscape contractors will often plow snow during the winter months to make more money, but because I like to ski in my downtime, I thought about what else I could do. We closed the garden center in 1980, but I remembered how we would decorate people's trees and how much joy it brought them, so I decided to launch the Southampton Christmas Lights company.

It didn't cost much to get started, as we already had trucks and ladders for the landscape contracting business. I bought boxes of Christmas lights from the local hardware store and put a sign up on the outside of my barn that just said "Christmas lights installation" along with a phone number.

That first year, I booked 12 customers. The next year, I had 24.

I remember when I finished putting up the lights on a tree for my first client

When I threw the switch, she just gasped and hugged me. I thought: "Wow, this is a great job. I've just made someone really happy, and then they paid me."

When we started, it was just myself and one assistant. Now, we have two crews of three people who install lights all over the Hamptons, from as far away as Westhampton and Montauk. My client list has also grown. It now includes the homes of TV stars, movie actors, and musicians. Last year, we completed 90 jobs between October and Thanksgiving.

Apart from the private homes, we decorate churches and firehouses in the Hamptons

We were also hired by the municipality to wrap the trees that line the streets of Southampton Village. It took two weeks to individually wrap each branch of 30 trees with lights.

Our average installation costs around $2,000, but some can be as cheap as $200, while others can cost up to $15,000 for installation only.

People don't need Christmas light installation, but they book us because we make the festive season a lot easier

We sell them their choice of lights — although white lights are still the most popular — and install them before Christmas, then take them down in the New Year. I store them in my barn for the next 10 months, before our teams go out to install them again.

Our clients don't have to face a tangled mess of lights each year when they dust off their box of Christmas decorations. They just flip the switch when I'm done.

While the majority of our installations go smoothly, we've had a few challenges

On one occasion, we kept getting calls from a park in Westhampton telling us that the lights we'd installed had gone out. It turned out the squirrels in the park were nibbling on the wires. Luckily, I didn't find any injured squirrels, so we just had to keep climbing up the tree and repairing the lights.

Our biggest concern when it comes to Christmas lights is water. If water gets into the lights, it can pop a fuse, so we always place connections above the ground.

We now have a cherry picker to help us with the installations, but we also use safety ropes to climb the trees. With some of the bigger trees where we wrap individual branches with lights, we can be working in the tree for half a day and guys will climb up with strips of lights to give to the other members of the crew. We had one job where the owner wanted 90 sets of lights — around 4,500 bulbs — in each of his four trees that were on his driveway.

The busiest time of the year for us is September

That's when our landscape contracting business is still busy, but we're starting to prep for the Christmas lights company. I'll send out an email at the end of the summer to our clients, and they'll start booking slots for their light installations.

Each year, a new client may phone us in November and ask if we can install lights the following week, and they're always surprised to hear we are already fully booked until Thanksgiving.

We start at 7 a.m. and work until it gets dark at 5 p.m.

My son and I will prepare the job sheets and lights the night before, so the crew can just fill the truck with the lights, ladders, wire cutters, electrical tapes, and zip ties for fastening the lights or wreaths. After they've driven to the job, I 'll then meet prospective clients.

While the majority of our jobs are for Christmas lights, we have also created a nine-foot-tall menorah for Hanukkah. In the summer, we've been asked to provide white lights for weddings.

One of our busiest times was actually during the pandemic

People who typically stay in the Hamptons just for the summer months, also stayed during the festive season. Lighting their home became even more important to them.

Clients were asking if their lights could be installed earlier and stay up for longer. People will only usually have one tree indoors, but during Christmas 2020, we had one client ask if we could decorate five trees — one of which was 16 feet tall — in their living room, sitting room, kitchen and foyer.

The Hamptons is usually thought of as a summer haven, but for me, the best memories are around Christmas

When I was younger, I remember that each year when it snowed, my dad would hook up a horse sleigh to his pickup truck. We'd pull on Santa hats and drive around town on Christmas morning, and people would come out of their houses and beg to have a ride on the sleigh.

I'm aware that people don't need me. I'm not selling food or protection. But if I install their festive lights right, it makes them very happy. It's always gratifying when you can make someone happy in your life's work.