Crazy Christmas Lights Looking to get into the Christmas spirit? Pile the family into the car and take a drive to Hastings to see Brian Dainard’s truly spectacular Christmas lights display. Brian is a wonderful, kind man with a generous heart. He started making Christmas lights dance to the music about 10 years ago. His love for over-the-top lighting started as a child. “I’ve always loved Christmas lights. We only had one window on the front of the house. My Mom would tape the window in sections, put a string of lights around it and spray fake snow. To me, we had the most beautiful lights in town. When I got older, there was a house between Havelock and Campbellford where they had a huge light display. We went there every year, and there would be Santa sitting in the garage on Christmas Eve to greet the kids. It was awesome, and I always thought how amazing it was that they would open up their home to perfect strangers on Christmas Eve. I absolutely loved it”, says Brian. To set all the lights up is very time consuming. Brian tells us, “It usually takes the month of November to set it up (he laughs), but the prep work for some of it starts much earlier. I usually order new lights by late spring.” There are approximately 40,000 lights this year. “I don’t keep track anymore, it’s a job in itself just trying to keep count”, Brian laughs. The lights dance in time to songs that Brian programs into a computer. “10 years ago, it was 100% me having to program it. It used to take me 40 – 60 hours of computer programming for just one song. But with the new pixel lighting and software that’s on the market now, it’s getting faster and easier to program a light show. I could cut that back to about 4 hours.” He wants to switch over to these new lights “but it all takes time and money, neither of which I seem to have.” (Brian laughs) Each year the show gets more and more dramatic. There will be a few significant additions, but not as much as I wanted to add”, he told us. You can listen to the music on your car radio at 88.1 FM. “Some people think that I have my own radio station.” (he laughs) So you may ask, what is the extra cost to Brian’s hydro bill? “It typically costs between $100 and $150 extra for December. This year might be slightly higher with the new pixels. They use more power than the LED lights do.”
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Brian Dainard
Photos curtousy of Beautiful Images by Montserrat
