Since moving into their Bixby Knolls house four years ago, Joe Hayden and Chris Payne’s spectacle of Christmas lights has not stopped growing.
What started with around 5,000 lights at their roughly 1,400 square-foot home on Falcon Avenue has expanded to over 100,000 lights synced up to dozens of songs from Christmas classics to pop hits.
Shows run each hour after dark with music playing through outdoor speakers or through car radios on 88.7 FM. If a show isn’t playing when guests walk up, they can push a button to begin one.
The couple’s roof features 228 vertical strands laid out in a grid that essentially acts as a digital display.
Setup takes about three months, but “it’s always a work in progress,” Hayden said.
Hayden, a self-described “tech nerd,” programs all of the shows himself and built the FM transmitter that broadcasts the tunes for free with a half-block radius. Hayden estimated that it takes him roughly five or six hours to program each song.