NRV Magazine Nov-Dec 2020

This Little Light of Mine local holiday décor aficionados amp up the average lighting display

Text by Nancy S. Moseley

When it comes to holiday decorations, “less is more” just doesn’t cut it. Nothing illustrates this better than when Charlie Brown tried to put a lone red ball on his paltry tree.

Immediate failure. It wasn’t until the tree was bedazzled with bling did it magically come to life. The ante ups every year regarding how much bling is required to stay relevant. Holiday preparation has become so much more than decking the halls with boughs of sharp greenery. Just swing by Hobby Lobby.

The use of light in celebration of Christmas began well before the invention of electricity. To honor Jesus as the “light of world”, candles were attached to evergreen trees. An elder would light them, the entire family would oooh and ahhhh for a few 14

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seconds, then they were extinguished.

In 1882, Edward Johnson, an associate of Thomas Edison, proposed replacing the risky candle tradition with a string of electric bulbs. President Glover Cleveland further popularized the idea by using lights on the White House tree in 1895. Due mostly to cost and accessibility, it would take until the mid-1950s for the average household to adopt the use of electric lights in holiday decor.

Fast forward to the mid-2000s when Carson Williams, an electrical engineer from Ohio, upped the bling ante even more by affixing an intricate maze of flashing holiday lights to his home, then synchronizing them to music. He became an Internet sensation when a viral video of the light show was featured on NBC’s The Today Show.

Thanks to Williams, it’s difficult to hear the Trans-Siberian Orchestra without imagining a bonanza of dancing lights.

In 2010, David Allen Kinder of Dublin, a lifelong lover of Christmas adornment, saw Williams’s famous show. A self-proclaimed “technology guy” he decided such an endeavor was right up his alley. Kinder found a company online that sold everything he needed to launch his own programmed light show. For the music, he purchased a radio transmitter that allowed him to broadcast within a few hundred feet of his house without a license. Spectators could stay in their cars, tune into a certain frequency and be dazzled by the entertainment.

Kinder’s holiday spectacular was locally one-of-a-kind, making the sensation contagious. In 2012, Kinder

Novemb er/Decemb er 2020