About the Show - The Ageless Childs' Christmas

The idea for the show came many years ago, late at night watching a video on my computer. Yeah, you know the one. That house was INSANE!!! I was hooked!
Of course all my family and friends already called me "Clark W. Griswold". At that time I had a 17,000+ light static display. Everything was set on timers and the setup typically took a week. I remember always cringing a bit when the electric bill came for the month of December. But since so many people enjoyed the lights - I always thought it was worth it.
Well if that was the case with 17,000 lights just sitting there, what would be the response with more lights synchronized to music? But where to start. I found out the lights in the video were controlled by products made by a company called Light-O-Rama. Good start. From there I found the goldmine of all things synchronized lights... Planet Christmas. From that day forward it was a year-long obsession to create the best show I could.
Our first year (2006) had 27,000 lights spread out over 64 channels. I wanted very dynamic music for the show. The only logical choice to me was the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. Having been to every year of their concerts, it was just common sense to put lights and their music together. If you have seen their shows, you know what I mean. If you haven't - drop everything and GO BUY TICKETS!!!
The first year was a great success. We ran the show for over a month with only a few minor hiccups. One big one - GFI outlets although a nice safety feature STINK when it comes to Christmas lights without ground wires - and rain. And in these parts of the world, we tend to get a bit of rain in December. Snow too. Sleet, slush, freezing rain, snow/rain mix and some other forms of precipitation that defy description.
2007 demanded we top our inagural effort. And did we ever. 46,000 lights on 144 channels! This was the first year of the leaping lights, driveway arches and my own creation - a 22 foot belltower complete with cross. We added in an opening song and made the whole thing sound much more professional with the help of The Demented Elf, who created some fantastic voice-overs for the show, including our opening song. We also added a donation box. I fought this at first but once my wife suggested we collect for our churches outreach charity - I was onboard. We raised over $1,800 for Beyond Our Walls. 100% of all donations went to an AIDS orphanage in Honduras.
2008 was a busy year. We knew we wanted to upgrade but weren't really sure what to do. More to the point we were running out of time. Our neighbor, who had helped us install the show last year, suggested we use her yard and "spread things out a bit." Great idea Tina!!! A few tweaks, pushes and pulls, and suddenly we had room to add another 16 channels and start to bring the branches of our large evergreen into the show. Most of the other elements remained the same so we were able to just modify our songs from 2007.
We probably should mention at this point the reason why we were so busy in 2008. Our home church, Cedar Creek, asked if I would design and manage the creation of a light show at the church. The Lights on Lime City is the result. If you are in the neighborhood (which you are if you are in front of our house), please stop by the church. We have over 110,000 lights sychronized to five TSO songs. Canned goods are being accepted for The Salvation Army.
For 2009, we revised our layout just a touch - added some chasing trees, some birds (our now famous Aviary under the evergreen), and made one more shot at putting lights in the evergreen branches that might be squirrely proof. The intent was to string lines from the ends of the branches back to the trunk, then wrap lights around the lines. We'll the squirrels apparently thought it was a new festival ride... see how far out you can eat lights on the strings! They destroyed 15 strands of very expensive LED lights. 2010 will require something new.
We are now finalizing our plans for 2010. Honestly, I've had enough of trying to beat the squirrels in the evergreen tree. Short of staying out all day long with a 22 (the sight of dozens of dead squirrels in the yard might dampen the Christmas spirit a bit!), we are looking at a drastic change at the evergreen. What is it going to be? Well, I guess you'll have to stop by and see the lights in December to find out!