Over The Top decorating contest winner

My wife Heather and I recently got married in July of 2007. We purchased our house and last year was the first year we decorated our home. In years past I installed lights for others and had a pretty good size display at my parent’s house. Once I had my own house, I was free to go “wild” with the Christmas Lights.

We are located in Hobbs, New Mexico. This is my first year with a computerized display. This year we have 155,000 lights on 224 Light-O-Rama channels. We have voice-overs in between each song. Many of the voice-overs remind visitors of the true meaning of Christmas. It is because of the birth of Jesus Christ that we celebrate this joyous season. We want people to enjoy the lights and display, but we want to be able to share the love of God with them as well.

Our display has many different elements. Most I have learned from others on PlanetChristmas. We have leaping arches, shooting star, light candy cane poles, mini trees, wire lighted tress, mega tree, stars, a cross, among other handmade décor. We also have a life size mechanical Santa on the front porch who waves to visitors of the display. I enjoy working on the display throughout the year. We really enjoy hearing about how the display touches people’s lives. I just like knowing our work will be remembered by people for the rest of their lives. We had one lady watching the lights and she was crying out front of the house because the lights touched her. People are always coming up to the door to thank us for the time and effort we have put into the display. One night we had about 50 carolers on trailers that came by. They said that because of everything we have done for the community they wanted to carol to us and asked us to come down the street where they had to park because of the traffic so they could carol to us. It was pretty funny they wanted us to come down the street.

We started putting up our display the end of September. After much work and anticipation the lights were on Thanksgiving night. The traffic for 2008 was very heavy. Many nights we gave out candy canes which helped people move along nicely. In 2008 we collected over $1,300 in donations for the Hobbs Boys and Girls Club of which 100% goes to help the local children. We are excited to be able to utilize the traffic the display draws to collect funds for a local and worthy cause.

A bit about Matt & Heather Hallum of the Hallums House of Lights. Want some details? For Christmas 2008, The Hallum House Of Lights consisted of over 155,000 Christmas Lights. Each large tree in the display had between 20,000 to 30,000 lights and wrapped with clear, red, and green lights. A man lift is used to install the lights in the large trees and takes three days. There are 40 mini trees around the perimeter of the display. The mega-tree stands 23′ tall and consists of 7,000 clear and red lights. The display includes over 90 specialty strobe lights. Each leaping arch consists of more than 2,000 lights. The eight light poles lining the walkway are each 10′ tall and consists of 2,000 clear and red lights. The stars on the roof rare 1.5′ tall to 5′ tall. The shooting star display has a span of 50′ from the air to the ground. The display is controlled by a computer in the house attached to 224 individual light channels. While visiting the display, the music can be heard on 88.5 FM. The construction of the display elements started back in May. Synchronizing the display alone took over 50 hours and installing the full display takes about six weeks working, nights, weekends and a few vacation days.. The display pulls over 360 amps of power when all the lights are on at 100% intensity.

From the July 2009 edition of PlanetChristmas Magazine

by Matt and Heather Hallum