Extreme Christmas Lights In Orlando

tripmine writes "The Orlando Sentinel has a story about a geek who can't get enough Christmas light. 'This Christmas, tech-savvy people such as Hansen are increasingly building the biggest, most elaborate holiday lights in neighborhoods across Central Florida and throughout the country. They typically work in fields such as computer programming, Web development, engineering or audio and visual services and are armed with a technical knowledge that the average person lacks. They trade tips and stories on message boards and set up Web sites with step-by-step descriptions of how they installed their lights as well as pictures and videos of the finished product.'" Many cities have neighborhoods where the spectacle takes up blocks at a time, not just individual houses, too, as anyone who's strolled down Austin's 37th Street can attest. Links invited (in comments) to the best / worst light-spectacles you know of.

Rochester (MI) has some nice lights

[dpryan]

Rochester Michigan has a really nice light display setup on all of the stores on Main St. Here's a link [ledgenlighting.com] to a slideshow from the company that put them up. Not surprisingly, the lights cause gridlock for about a mile in each direction, but it's worth it.

Re:Global warming

[lilomar]

Um, not to be pedantic, but Easter is near the Spring equinox, not the Summer solstice.

Re:Global warming

[orclevegam]

Um, not to be pedantic, but Easter is near the Spring equinox, not the Summer solstice.

I stand corrected. However, the point still remains that Easter was used to replace pre-existing pagan fertility holidays.

Re:Global warming

[prandal]

Easter retains its Pagan origins, being celebrated on the first Sunday following the first full moon following the vernal equinox.

Dallas Area

[robwmc]

There is a house in Frisco (just north of Dallas) that has been doing this for several years. They have a small site and it gives descriptions, pictures and video. You can see it here [trykoskichristmas.com].

We usually take our daughter to see it every year.

Re:Global warming

[orclevegam]

After Yusaku commented I went back and read the article he mentioned. The title of the article is actually somewhat misleading though as it's not a ban on incandescent bulbs, but a ban on selling non-energy-efficient incandescent bulbs after 2012. Going back to look over the article again it looks like the title has been amended as well to insert a "(most)" into it.

Re:Global warming

[Yusaku Godai]

The whole "virgin" thing is a relatively recent phenomenon. When the New Testament was being translated from Hebrew to Greek they took to word "almah", generally referring to a young, unwed girl, and translated it to the Greek "parthenos" ("virgin"). So yeah, Jesus was more likely the bastard son of an unwed teen mommy.

Re:Global warming

[Wooky_linuxer]

Easter is a Jewish Holiday, and predates Christians by some centuries at the very least. In most languages the term for Easter derives from the Jewish term Pessach. One may still argue that the holiday was celebrated in that time of the year so to undermine pagan celebrations, but it is unlikely this was arranged by Christians.