Posted 12/06/2004 05:27:00 PM by Douglas

Christmas lights. Is there anything they can't do? Apparently annoying the shit out of people and bilking brain-dead suburbanites out of their money aren't two of them.

Parcell, 47, is a toy soldier in a growing army of Christmas enthusiasts becoming more sophisticated at turning yards into blazing monuments to the holidays.

New companies are cropping up with elaborate, automated decorations and the computer equipment to coordinate them, giving anyone with a wallet the ability to create scenes similar to a theme park.

Tens of thousands of people also have found a way to skip all those hours out in the cold hanging lights — opting to hire private companies to deck their halls for anywhere from a few hundred dollars to thousands. One such company, Texas-based Christmas Decor, has grown from 300 customers to over 32,000 in the past eight years.

I've said it before, most people think that Christmas Vacation is an instructional video. Surely we can make Christmas lights totally absurd, can't we?

In Little Rock, Ark., some residents were so upset about a display with 3 million lights — said to be visible from 80 miles away — that they got the state's supreme court to agree it was a public nuisance and order it scaled back.

If your Christmas lights have ever been before you're state's supreme court, you've got some serious issues. And free time.