I am not even done digesting our Turkey dinner and I see Christmas decorations already getting setup, on the short drive home from my parents house.
You see, here on my block, people seem to keep putting up bigger and brighter Christmas decorations every year. Holiday decorations are anything but subtle here in the burbs. Christmas lighting will sometimes take up the whole yard and burn up countless kilowatts of power.
My neighbor Jim, for example, has a lighted inflatable snowman, a glowing reindeer carousel, and dozens of other lighted displays as well. So this year, I thought that I would get more involved. I wanted to go for a touch of class, using an understated Christmas display. That is why I decided to go to the local store and pickup some miniature Christmas lights.
Of course, I have been using miniature Christmas tree lights for years. I like to create a multi-tiered effect by using lights of different sizes and colors. I have a small strand of white light bulbs at the back, a smaller Christmas light strand halfway down the branches of my pine trees and some miniature Christmas lights near the tips of the limbs.
It does take a little while to set up, but the effect is gorgeous. I have always had one of the best Christmas trees in the neighborhood, even when you don’t factor in my impressive collection of Christmas ornaments.
Putting up the miniature Christmas lights on the outside of my house, however, seemed like a much bigger challenge. It wasn’t that it is hard to put up Christmas led lights on the roof — they are no harder to put up than any other strand of lights. The real challenge was doing the light display to create the maximum effect. I really wanted to create a look that would be noticed.
The key to a good miniature Christmas light display, after I found out after spending a few hours tinkering with different configurations, is to go for something understated. A lot of people decide to buy tons of miniature Christmas lights, believing that the cumulative effect will be more impressive than using fewer strands of normal lights.
However, in my opinion, if you are going for sheer volume and impressiveness, just use the normal lights! With miniature Christmas lights, subtlety is the key. Trace the outline of your house or make a few simple holiday designs, just keep it simple. The display will be less over the top, which makes it more magical, somehow.
Anyone can do bigger and brighter. It takes a little bit of creativity to do a more sophisticated display using miniature Christmas lights.