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. The first year was a great success. We ran the show for over a month with only a few minor hiccups.
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 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.
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. No luck! They destroyed 15 strands of very expensive LED lights. 2010 will require something new.
For 2010 we made some changes to get the lights away from those squirrels in the evergreen. We add 4 more chasing trees to the display to bring the total of them up to 12. We gave up on some of the wire frame figures (Snowmen, Angel, Drummer Boy, Candles) and added in "The Wheel"! This is a 14' diamter trampoline frame with 12 "spokes" of lights running to the center.
For 2011 we have completely redesigned the show. We have simplified the layout to just our four major colors (blue, white, green, red) but added those colors to more elements. My neighbor is very excited about us taking over parts of her house in addition to her front yard! This year marks the debute of our Spiral Tree and Candy Canes. "The Wheel" has been rebuilt - a bit smaller but now in four colors. Our leaping lights have been split in half (8 channels each instead of 16) but now we have six sets all indivually controlled. We also have now CROSSED THE STREET! Look for a few trees lit up on the right side of the street this year.