‘Lights on Avenue C’ is a dazzling holiday display

WASHINGTON — Jacob Stewart started setting up music-synchronized holiday light displays back when he was a high school kid in Wapello. The hobby followed him as an adult to the Cedar Rapids area, but he took a break from it after the next move in 2017 to Wisconsin, where he had a smaller home with less yard space.

Now settled in Washington, he’s back to arranging the display in his yard, with the setup process starting all the way back in September, and ending in November with the raising of a sizable “tree” made of lights tethered to a pole.

“It’s definitely a lot of work,” Stewart said. “What got me hooked on it was, I just liked the tech side of it, so I was like, ‘OK, I want to figure out how they do that, first off,’ and it’s not that hard. So I just kind of fell down the rabbit hole, and this is where we’re at.”

Some 8,000 feet of extension cords, roughly 500,000 light bulbs and dozens of inflatables make up the display, a technical marvel that runs every night from 5-10 p.m. It takes about 240 volts to illuminate, the equivalent of what it would take to power around 32 heat lamps, as Stewart’s explained to one group of farmers.

The lights are programmed to blink in time with a 39-minute music program, broadcast over a local FM radio frequency. Every strand’s activation is manually programmed, down to a tenth of a second. About half of that work is done by Stewart — taking about four or five hours per song — who buys the rest from other hobbyists online, before tinkering with the program to match his own setup.

It’s worth noting that Stewart’s day job is in IT work, and he used to work as an electrician.

A few elements of the show required help. A voice-over on the local broadcast was recorded by a friend in Toronto, and another friend had to help set up the light-and-pole tree display, which is large and unwieldy. But for the most part, the months of preparation fall to Stewart.

In total, he puts the project’s cost at roughly a cumulative $15,000 since his first display, between expenses for supply, electricity and the decorations themselves.

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“Everybody asks, ‘How do you make money on this?’” Stewart jokes. “You don’t. From the moment September happens to the end, you’re losing money.”

Still, he said it was worth every second of effort and every penny of cash he put into the display.

“There’s a virtual guest book you can get by scanning a QR code outside, and it brings joy to people, you can tell from all the comments they leave there,” Stewart said. “It brings joy, kids like it … it brings a handful of people by each week.”

The 11-song music selection is widely varied. It includes a handful of wintry music, like a track from Frozen, and a rock cover of “Deck the Halls.” But it’s also got more tangentially thematic songs like Lindsey Buckingham’s “Holiday Road,” and others included solely for their fast pace, like Metallica’s “Enter Sandman.”

“Obviously you have to have Christmas music in there, because that’s part of it, but I like to get the lights moving a little more,” Stewart said. “There’s only a handful of traditional, un-remixed instrumental-only (songs) in there, because those lights are slow and boring, and I want them to be fast and catching attention.”

While the holiday season is hardly over, Stewart is already making plans for next year’s lights display.

While he didn’t want to spoil the surprise, the technician said the setup would only get more elaborate with time. He’s considering programs for multiple, different shows in the same night. He also expects to add more visual effects.

“I try to one-up myself every year, build on it,” Stewart said. “There’s 500-some thousand (bulbs,) I always push myself to take a quarter of that and add that onto it … usually I get there. This isn’t even all that I already have from 2017, there’s still more in storage.”

Comments: Kalen.McCain@southeastiowaunion.com