[NormsRevenge]

Holiday decorations and high-tech, computer-coordinated lights fill Greg Parcell's front yard Wednesday, Dec. 1, 2004, in Geneva, Ill. Parcell is one of many Christmas enthusiasts who are growing increasingly sophisticated at turning yards into blazing monuments to the holidays. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)

[Semper Paratus]

Whatever happened to the white candle light in the window?

[NormsRevenge]

Share your holiday displays here .. or not.

Ho Ho Ho.

[Obadiah]

[Publius6961]

What do these people do? Rent generators? Replace their service drop with a 1000 Amp service? Burn the neighborhood down?
What?

[capydick]

Penguins around a campfire? What's that got to do with Christmas?

[Gabz]

In Monte Sereno, Calif., a couple whose huge display attracted thousands of passers-by angered neighbors and led the city council to require a permit for any exhibit lasting longer than three days. This year, the yard holds a 10-foot Grinch, its spiny finger pointing at the house of the neighbors who initiated the complaints.

What a riot!!!!!!!!!

[subterfuge]

Tens of thousands of people also have found a way to skip all those hours out in the cold hanging lights

Hey, just leave them up year round like we do. (I guess its time to get rid of that Jack-O-Lantirn)

[raccoonradio]

>>Holiday Displays Take Over Neighborhoods

Notice that word in the headline...don't say Merry Christmas say Happy Hhhhhhhhholidays (I spell it that way because that's how Howie Carr jokingly speaks the phrase on his radio show)
or you won't be PC!
Word has it (it was discussed on WRKO/Boston this morning)
that--horrors--the mayor of the People's Republic of
Cambridge had issued invitations for a CHRISTMAS Party
and later wound up APOLOGIZING for the use of the
dreaded C-word! Oh, the humanity!!

[CDHart]

Wouldn't it be nice if all the money and effort put into this went instead to spreading the real message of Christmas?

Carolyn

[WestCoastGal]

One of my favorites is the Newport Beach boat parade!!

[Mo1]

The Electric Company likes me at Christmas time :0)


HO HO HO .. MERRY CHRISTMAS

[Jhensy]

From yesterday's NY Post:

$4M XMAS GIFT

By ANGELA MONTEFINISE ------------------------------------------------------------------------

December 5, 2004 -- With 37,000 volts and 50,000 miniature light bulbs, the city's most festive home this holiday season would put Rudolph's nose to shame.

"The Christmas House," or the Garabedian family's two-story home on Pelham Parkway in The Bronx, is electrifying thousands of daily visitors for the 30th consecutive year.

By the numbers, no home in the city offers a bigger holiday show. Enough electricity to operate 25 hair dryers is used to illuminate 130 homemade moving fiberglass statues, 30 decorated Christmas trees and a host of other fancy holiday treats.

"We don't just string up a bunch of lights," said Gary Garabedian, 40, who works with his parents, Eugene and Nelly, and his sisters, Elise, 48, and Linda, 47, to create and put up the detailed show. "We make absolutely everything out of fiberglass. We don't buy a thing except the Christmas trees that we decorate."

This year, the Garabedians' show - which is set up on both the front and side of their home - includes moving fiberglass statues of Frank Sinatra and the Rockettes, Disney's Beauty and the Beast, Santa Claus and his reindeer, Cinderella and her horsemen and dozens of men and women in ballroom gear.

Several of the figures dance a waltz. One male figure proposes to his girlfriend. Liberace plays a realistic-looking "Steinway piano." A huge Nativity scene overlooks the entire display.

Music - which, oddly enough, does not usually include Christmas carols but hits by singers like Dean Martin, Barbra Streisand and Frank Sinatra - plays constantly over loudspeakers, while 40 500-watt halogen lamps light up the scene.

Garabedian couldn't estimate the total cost, but his theft-insurance policy puts it at between $3 million and $4 million. "It's more of a Christmas show than a display," Garabedian said, adding that the neighbors don't complain.

The Garabedian family works on the show year-round, taking two to three days to create, paint and dress each figure. The display starts going up in September and comes down in January.

The house, which was featured in Mariah Carey's "All I Want For Christmas" video, receives between 5,000 and 20,000 visitors a night. "When it gets real close to Christmas, it takes two hours for cars to get down our street and look at the house," Garabedian said.

But the traffic backup is all for a good cause. Each year, the family collects about $3,000 in donations from visitors, which is given to diabetes charities through St. Theresa's Church in The Bronx. Garabedian said, "This is our Christmas gift to the community."

The house is located at 1605 Pelham Parkway North in The Bronx and is lit at 4:30 p.m. every day. It stays on as late as 2 a.m., according to Garabedian.

[NormsRevenge]

A man poses as Santa Claus with a reindeer in Lapland. Moscow police swung into action to arrest a man who had reported that a female suicide bomber disguised as a Christmas fairy was planning to carry out an attack on Santa Claus in the northern Russian town of Veliki Ustyug, ITAR-TASS news agency said.(AFP/LEHTIKUVA/File)

---

AFP - The fright before Christmas: Santa Claus in terror hoax

[NormsRevenge]

Beer tree : The top of a huge Christmas tree made of 2,500 empty beer bottles, erected by German artists Ralph Juecker and Thomas Kraus on the banks of the river Rhine sits before Cologne's Dome. (AFP/DDP/Henning Kaiser)

[NormsRevenge]

Rockefeller Center Christmas tree lighting celebration at Rockefeller Center Tuesday, Nov. 30, 2004 in New York. (AP Photos/Julie Jacobson)

[alfa6]

I think this would go well on this thread, hehehe

Regards

alfa6 ;>}

[Cacique]

L8R

[TChris]

Temple Square, Salt Lake City, UT

---

---

---

[NotJustAnotherPrettyFace]

Melissa Williams, an owner of Christmas Done Bright in Sevierville, Tenn., said customers, particularly middle-aged men, "want to decorate everything. They compete with their brothers and neighbors."

Kissing cousins to the guys who soup up lawn mowers and race them around for prizes ;-).

[Thinkin' Gal]

In Monte Sereno, Calif., a couple whose huge display attracted thousands of passers-by angered neighbors and led the city council to require a permit for any exhibit lasting longer than three days. This year, the yard holds a 10-foot Grinch, its spiny finger pointing at the house of the neighbors who initiated the complaints.

Spirit of Christmas ping.