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    We’ve made it too complicated!

    Remember chaser strings from long ago?  Wrap one of those around your Christmas tree and suddenly it had personality.  The string had a controller at the end about the size…

    PlanetChristmas is back in 2023!

    Here’s a short video (just over a minute) that shows the highlights of PlanetChristmas 2023. The last major light display at the PlanetChristmas world headquarters in Franklin, Tennessee was way…

    A Better/Cheaper RGB Pixel Matrix Solution?

    I’ve been thinking about adding some sort of pixel matrix to my Christmas display so I could do more messages, graphics and video.  A P10 RGB panel display or pixel…

    Thinking about RGB pixels?

    Back in the old days you would plug in a string of Christmas lights and they would just turn on.  Easy. Technology started getting involved about a decade ago. Think…

    Make your own wireframe for the yard

    Ready to create your own wireframes to continue the theme you have evolving in your Christmas display?  You can always go to a local welding shop but it gets expensive…

    How to fix a blow mold?

    Does your Christmas blow mold need some tender-loving care?  John Yanik created an excellent video to guide you through the process.  Check it out! Standby while we load this from…

    How do they make Christmas lights?

    So, how does the factory make a string of Christmas Lights?  It really helps to have a specialized machine and a lot of automation.  This YouTube video is a bit…

    Holiday Lights at Cheekwood Trains 2022

    What happens when you mix a giant model trains layout with Christmas lights dancing to the music?  You end up with Holiday Lights down at the TRAINS! display at Cheekwood…

    2022 Top 10 Christmas tunes list

    At PlanetChristmas we get to see a lot of Christmas displays. We also talk to music producers, programmers and radio DJs about what they think will be hot come Christmas…

    Be a good Santa

    I had the pleasure of attending the “Celebrate Santa” convention back in March of this year. There were about 400 portly gentlemen attending to trade secrets on how to be…

    The Forums are back!

    It was 1997 when the Internet was relatively new and the PlanetChristmas.com domain had just been granted. Back then you filled out a paper form, mailed it in and waited…

    TSO keeps going and going and going

    Trans-Siberian Orchestra reveals 2022 holiday tour dates and answers your burning questions by Melissa Ruggieri of USA TODAY Rare is the juggernaut as potent as Trans-Siberian Orchestra. The musical locomotive…

    Really worth reading...

    Some of our favorite articles:

      Santaland

      Santaland opened for the first time 25 years ago in Madison, MN, a small rural town in west central Minnesota. Inclement weather moved the original Santaland from the frigid cold…

      The largest computerized Christmas tree in the world

      How does one construct the largest artificial foliage Christmas tree in the world? Bi-Lingual-ly of course! But I’m getting ahead of myself . . . . Let’s start at the…

      Geek my tree

      An interesting thing happened this past Christmas. After retiring my show I got bored and needed to find something to do. I decided to decorate my 12’ Christmas tree with…

      Streamlining your display setup and teardown

      Time is precious and it becomes more so as the pre-holiday decorating season gets underway. This is my ninth season for an over-the-top display and fourth year of using a…

      Top 10 ideas

      Whether you’re a newbie or an experienced decorator, it’s a lot of work to get geared up to start the display setup process. The purpose of this article is to…

      Christmas lights version 3

      For nearly a century our parents and grandparents have been hanging lights on trees, houses and yards – and, for nearly that entire time, they were just static, sans maybe…

      The Christmas Ranch

      I picked up the phone and it was Dr. Mike Fuchs, the owner of The Christmas Ranch northeast of Cincinnati. I had heard about this place for years and all…

      Off season in the Christmas business

      It’s that time of the year again when the earth is shifting on its axis, the days in the northern hemisphere are getting longer and the Christmas lighting off-season is…

      Twas the night before Christmas, a visit from St. Nicholas

      ‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse; The stockings were hung by the chimney with care In hopes…

      My search for the first snowman

      Who made the first snowman? Who first came up with the idea of placing one snowball atop another and sticking a carrot in the top sphere? This was my quest…

      Then there are the rumors...

        Here we go with the rumor mill

        This can’t be good. There’s been another data-dump onto the world from WikiLeaks. I just did a quick search for…

        The Rumor Mill (again)

        Labor Day. It’s typically when the politicians kick into high gear. How can you tell when one isn’t telling the…

        The Rumor Mill

        We get satellite TV in the workshop up here at the North Pole. Ernie (the super-geeky elf: think thick glasses,…

        The Grinch…

        When it comes to “Do-it-Yourself” wizardry, I don’t think you will find a more creative bunch of people than those…

        Rumor mill rumors

        I’m a Christmas dude. Always considered Halloween people to be way-too-weird for this normal-thinking elf. Zombie movies, haunted houses and…

        More from the rumor mill

        Microsoft has determined the attention span of a human is eight seconds. Mythbusters figured out a goldfish can stay focused…

        The Grinch hates flying

        The Grinch made it to re-PLUS in Louisville on August 1. It wasn’t the first time I’ve gone to one…

        The Rumor Mill keeps grinding it out

        Santa gave us Labor Day off with one little caveat. We had to promise to return the next day ready…

        Not the rumor mill again?

        All this time us elves thought we were watching Mother Nature’s Northern Lights up in the sky but we’re no…

        Rumor mill rumblings

        The workshop has been buzzing about all that recent presidential excitement in the USA. We’ve never had an election here…

        The rumor mill grinds on

        When Santa isn’t looking we sneak off to the elf lounge and surf the Internet so we can keep up…

        Rumor mill ruminations

        What an interesting summer with the war of the Christmas shows, each on the same weekend of July in Conroe,…

        Where are the forums?

        The PlanetChristmas Forums are on an extended sabbatical. 

        If you want to engage with the decorating community, head on over to our Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/groups/planetchristmas

        If you really want to see the PlanetChristmas Forums come back on-line, send an email to Chuck (chuck at planetchristmas.com)

        No matter what, remember our three rules.  We are:

        1. Positive
        2. Family Friendly
        3. Christmas-centric
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