BEMIDJI — Paul Bunyan Park was buzzing with Christmas spirit on Friday morning as the First City of Lights Foundation added its newest spectacle to Bemidji’s waterfront display.
The sight is hard to miss. Built by Bemidji Steel Company, the programmable LED pixel Christmas gift box called “The Greatest Gift” is 30 feet tall and weighs more than 2,100 pounds.
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And the gift box isn’t just impressive to those taking a walk through the park; the towering structure was designed to break a world record for the largest digital pixel gift display.
For Josh Peterson, First City of Lights Foundation’s executive director, the idea for the display was born after he attended the TransWorld's Christmas Show, a week-long holiday-themed trade show in St. Louis held in late February.
There he partnered with Josh Letourneau, founder of Light Up The Night Production, a company that creates immersive attractions and helped convert Bemidji’s iconic Christmas tree into the largest pixel tree in the midwest last year.
“Light Up The Night Production and Josh Letourneau hold the world record for the world’s largest Christmas pixel tree, so he’s ambitious like I am,” Peterson said with a smile. “He’s like, ‘Why don’t we try to break another world record?’”
After some brainstorming, the pair decided to set their sights on creating the world’s largest gift. According to Letourneau’s research, the gift would have to be 20 feet wide, 20 feet long and 30 feet tall in order to secure the title.
With the concept set, all they needed was a manufacturer who could make their vision come to life. The right company for the job, as it turned out, was close to home.
“A lot of this stuff is made out of Texas and everyone uses the same manufacturer. Well, this was a top-secret project for all of us,” Peterson disclosed. “That’s where Bemidji Steel came in … we have a major steel company in Bemidji, right? So that’s how this became a little bit of an economic development tie-in.”
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Light Up The Night Production held a meeting with Bemidji Steel Company about creating a prototype of the display this past spring. The formal announcement of the project came on June 25, exactly six months before Christmas Day.
After that, it was time for the idea to become reality.
‘A true community project’
For Bemidji Steel, the potentially world-record-breaking project was a significant undertaking.
COO Alex Grasdalen expressed that building the display was a “labor of love,” a true gift to the community with the goal of illuminating Bemidji during the bleak winter months.
“We produced it with some cool technology that we have here,” Grasdalen said about the process. “The main structure of it was cut with our tube lasers … the bow is also kind of two-dimensional the way it fits together — something else we designed here in-house, too.”
Toby Glen, Bemidji Steel’s director of manufacturing, was on-site at Paul Bunyan Park for nearly 10 hours on Friday as he worked with a crew to assemble the gift, which sits over the walking path near the waterfront.
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“It actually went pretty smooth,” Glen said about the setup process. “We brought a couple extra supports and gusset-type things if we needed to use them and we ended up putting those on. As the sheer size of this thing truly comes to life, it’s like holy cow, this is even bigger than what we were thinking it was going to be. I’m glad we supported it and made it as sturdy as we could.”
As Peterson helped assemble the gift along with Glen and the rest of the crew, he noted that creating the project was an entirely new wheelhouse for Bemidji Steel.
“It’s a whole different world when you’re building something from scratch compared to the kits that we purchased for all the other displays,” Peterson said. “We have our blueprints for this thing, but we’re kind of creating it and programming it and building it as we go.”
With a possible record-breaking accomplishment under its belt, Grasdalen hopes that the project opens Bemidji Steel up to the possibility of producing parts for holiday displays on a wider scale.
“We stepped out of the comfort zone a little bit to do (this) hoping that then Bemidji Steel kind of gets recognized more on a national level,” Grasdalen said. “Our tube lasers are excellent at producing those types of parts, and then someone else would take that and put (the display) together.”
As Bemidji Steel worked diligently to create the gift, they received plenty of help from other local companies. JC Custom Welding and Electric welded the structure and Christiansen Industrial Developers donated crane time to assemble it. Even students at Kingdom Builders Christian pitched in, spending a couple of days painting the frame and attaching strings of lights.
“There’s a lot of hands that touched it throughout the community to make it happen,” Glen noted, with Grasdalen adding that “it turned into a good community project and kind of showed off Bemidji and what we can do.”
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Peterson also expressed the importance of having the display fully created by local organizations and volunteers.
“It’s a true community project in a sense of community pride for the simple fact that it’s the first of its kind, the largest in the world, and it will be 100% built locally,” Peterson said. “It’ll put Bemidji on the map in so many different ways.”
With the preliminary paperwork submitted to Guinness for the world record attempt, Peterson expressed that above all else, he hopes the gift offers an immersive experience for Bemidjians and visitors to enjoy during the holiday season that differs from other light shows in the state.
“We don’t want to be a copycat of what everyone else does around the state of Minnesota for their displays so doing things that are Paul Bunyan-sized is kind of our theme,” Peterson said. “This is going to be a great asset, a great feature to Bemidji.”
Event schedule
As Bemidji awaits the moment The Greatest Gift lights up during the Night We Light ceremony on Nov. 29, there are plenty of other festivities going on to kick off the holiday season.
Registration for the Christmas window display contest for downtown businesses is open through Nov. 20.
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The public will vote from Nov. 29 through Dec. 18 through either a Google Form or at the Tourist Information Center to choose the winner of the People's Choice Award.
An independent panel of judges will also vote for the first, second and third-place winners. The winners will be publicly announced in the Bemidji Pioneer.
Registration for the Tour of Homes also remains open until Nov. 20.
After registration closes, the addresses will be added to the Tour of Homes map, which will be available at the Bemidji Pioneer, Tourist Information Center and online for Christmas light enthusiasts to use to see displays.
The map will also be available for pick up at the Night We Light Festival, held on Nov. 29, in Santa's Workshop located inside the Tourist Information Center, as well as various locations around town.
To sign up, visit
Santa’s Workshop will take place from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Nov. 29 and 30 at the Tourist Information Center. Children will have the opportunity to take their photo with Santa and make holiday crafts provided by the Bemidji Parks and Recreation Department.
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The annual Night We Light Parade will start at 6 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 29. The route will travel east on Eighth Street, turning south on Beltrami Avenue to Third Street where it will travel west and end at Irvine Avenue.
Immediately following the parade, the Night We Light ceremony will take place at Paul Bunyan Park. This is when the official countdown is held and the giant light switch is flipped to illuminate the city. After the ceremony, a fireworks show will cap off the evening of festivities.
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