PlanetChristmas History

  • PlanetChristmas 2023

    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 back in 2003.  LEDs and digital pixels were science fiction.  Watching the electric meter spin like a top when all the outside Christmas lights were on was normal.  When the lights were the brightest outside the house the lights were dimming inside, My how times have changed.  Watch the full length video below. The PlanetChristmas synchronized light display is finally back home.  Chuck Smith is using it as a testing…

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  • Holiday Lights at Cheekwood TRAINS! 2022

    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 Estate and Gardens in Nashville, Tennessee.  The outdoor layout has over 1000 feet of track running eight trains.  See more at http://cheekwood.org/trains. PlanetChristmas helped with the design and installation of the holiday lights.  Details are below but checkout the video first. So how about some details of the display? Train gauge: G scale Number of separate tracks: 8 Total length of tracks: 1035 feet Total lights: 30,964 RGB pixels: 12,887…

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  • Forums

    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 several weeks to see if you got the domain name you wanted. I found some free software for a bulletin board application, installed it on the new PlanetChristmas domain, made a few posts and forgot about it. Several weeks later there was another post and after about a year there were a handful of Christmas decorating fanatics exchanging ideas. How we found each other is still a mystery to me…

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  • Chuck's 1972 Christmas display

    Before PlanetChristmas

    It was 1960. I was six years old. John F. Kennedy was in the White House and the country was experiencing Camelot, we just didn’t know it at the time. Then I saw them in the Sunday advertisement for the Rexall Drug Store about a mile from the house where we lived in Richardson, Texas. They had a set of 15 outdoor Christmas lights for $3.99. I had to have them! Two of my cousins lived in Garland, in a huge house that was always lined in Christmas lights. They would always get incredible Christmas presents from Santa and I…

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