Monday, December 24, 2012

Another Christmas calendar card; Christmas lights



Wanted to share some more Christmas with you!  Here is another one of the Christmas cards I made that features a 2013 calendar and a photo - it was made with Stampin Up's My Digital Studio.

Have you ever been on a Christmas light tour?  We love to do one or two every year! Are you curious about how the first outdoor displays of lights started?  San Diego, CA in 1904, Appleton, WI in 1909 and New York City, NY in 1912 were the first recordings of Christmas lights being used outdoors. The Library of Congress credits the town of McAdenville, NC as inventing the tradition of decorating outdoors with Christmas lights in 1956. The Men’s Club conceived the idea of decorating several evergreen trees around the McAdenville Community Center.

The Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree in New York City, NY had lights since 1931 but did not have real electrical ones until 1956. Furthermore, Philadelphia, PA had their Christmas Light Show and Disney’s Christmas Tree also began in 1956. General Electric sponsored community lighting competitions in the 1920’s but it wasn’t until the 1950’s that outdoor lighting actually became a familiar activity with the general populace.


 


Here are a few more views of this cool tri-fold Chrismas card and more about the Christmas light shows.  Since the 1950s the stringing of lights around windows, along mantles and banisters,  and running strings along the outside frames of homes and businesses became fashionable. In recent times, skyscrapers and larger buildings began hanging strings of lights to form shapes or common themes and were lit in a ceremony of Grand Illuminations. 

In 2004, a viral video hit the internet of Carson Williams home in Mason, OH. Williams lit his home and surrounding lawn with over 16,000 lights. He synchronized the lights to turn on and off with a computer and a controller from Light-O-Rama, using 88 channels. The music he used for this performance was the Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s piece entitled “Wizards in Winter.” For each minute of music, it took an hour to program this synchronization of lights turning on and off. With the agreement of his neighbors, the light show ran from 6pm to 10pm. People driving by heard the music from an FM broadcast in their cars to keep the noise level down. Wow!!!
 
 
 
Once the video went viral, it became so popular that his light show was highlighted in a Miller Lite Beer commercial the following December 2005. It was also featured on NBC’s Today Show, Inside Edition and the CBS Evening News. The attraction became so popular that traffic congestion became a problem in his neighborhood. On December 6, 2005 he indefinitely shut down the show when emergency vehicles responding to a traffic accident, had a difficult time getting through.
In 2006 he created a business creating custom light shows, Consarlights.com. He has since created commercial light shows for shopping plazas, parks, museums and zoos. His average show consists of over 250,000 lights and uses 150 amperes of electricity!!!
  

This phenomenon has caught on so much that there are now subdivisions creating light shows utilizing several neighbors homes, all synchronized with lights coming off and on and set to several Christmas songs.  Grab a cuppa, sit back, relax and enjoy a these two Youtube holiday light shows …The second one has a military flair tribute.

Hope you are enjoying Christmas Eve with family, relative, friends, etc.!!

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