TVScope: Holiday Madness: Crazy Christmas LightsTV3, Thursday, December 13th, 8pm
Christmas lights provide us with a great opportunity for self-expression. It is not, this programme stressed, how many lights you have, but how you hang them. Holiday Madnesswas a delightfully exuberant celebration of the work of those who push this form of self-expression to its limits.
It was filmed in America where there are superb examples of "crazy supersized" Christmas displays, but many in our towns and countryside would give them a run for their money. The wonderfully eccentric Kenny, who was every energy conservationist's nightmare, was the most extreme example featured. He expressed himself by using five million bulbs to turn his four-acre Californian garden into a magical Christmas fantasy, complete with a 60ft Santa, and crash test dummy nativity figures.
While Kenny was a one-man operation ("me, myself and I"), there are so many light enthusiasts in Richmond, Virginia, they have taken to running "Tacky Lights Tours". There is fierce competition to get on the coveted list of Tacky Tour Homes. Tasteful neighbourhoods are invaded by armies of Santas, snowmen, shepherds, sheep and all manner of lights: swags, nets, icicles, ropes, all flashing, sparkling and strobing.
A contributing factor to the phenomenon of this turning of their homes and gardens into glowing exhibits which can be seen from outer space is the playful inner-child of Richmond's middle- aged sheriff.
Come Christmas, he dons his "Mr Christmas" suit and, not content with illuminating both himself and his house, he also runs his own Christmas radio station from under his stairs. Why do they do it?
A psychologist offered some obvious answers about how people usually have selfish motives, and while claiming to do it for the kids, they are really doing it for themselves. People get hooked into Christmas as a symbol of what was good about their childhood. No surprise in that.
Some of the light-loving residents of Richmond were insightful into the obsessive compulsive nature of their "hobby", with holidays being sacrificed and huge sums of money invested in their passion. Most did it simply because they could, and the pleasure they got and the spin- off pleasure for others was its own reward.
The awe and wonder on the faces of children and adults alike who came to pay homage to their Aetherial shrines made all of their work worthwhile for them. The creation of these OTT displays also provides an opportunity for families and neighbours to work together to achieve a common goal, in the true spirit of Christmas.
Christmas lights are for all of us a defiant antidote to these dark, dismal days of December. Our modern-day ritual of the switching on of the lights echoes an age-old desire to dispel the darkness. In these days of style dictatorship as to what constitutes good taste in how we light up our homes and trees, perhaps it is time to rebel and follow your heart.
If the maxim "it is better to light a candle than to curse the dark" holds true, why stop at just one candle?