BOUNTIFUL -- For Rick Rice, Christmas began in July, when he started programming his light displays.
His are not just ordinary Christmas lights, but 17,000 lights that flash, fade, shimmer and chase one another in precise timing with music.
Of course, this meant listening to the music hundreds of times to get the lights matched up to the exact millisecond, which Rice did in the summer heat as he listened to songs about halls being decked with holly and sugarplum fairies enjoying a holly, jolly Christmas.
From 6 p.m. until 10 p.m. each night through most of December, Rice runs the light show from his home at 980 Canyon Creek Drive in Bountiful, garnering the attention of numerous onlookers who let him know how much they like it.
“That’s the only reason why I did it,” Rice said. “I love doing Christmas lights in some form or fashion because it’s so exciting. But seeing people that have enjoyed it makes it worth it.”
The light show also includes Santa on the house, seemingly singing right along with the Christmas carols.
The Leishman family from Bountiful enjoyed it so much the first time they saw it, they came back a second time and brought friends with them.
“It is really clever and brightens any holiday spirit,” said Marilyn Leishman.
Rice has been setting up Christmas lights for others to enjoy for years.
His wife thinks he is a bit obsessed, but to him, it’s not anything big.
A couple years ago, his grandchildren asked him about setting up his lights to music, so he heeded the request and started collecting the equipment he needed.
He finally put it all together this year.
Surprisingly, setting up an elaborate musical serenade doesn’t require a lot of extra materials because any set of regular or LED lights will work.
However, Rice said, a lot of extension cords are a must, with 128 being used at his house.
But a simple software program can be used by almost anyone to set up the dancing lights, especially given that Rice considers himself computer illiterate.
Once he figured out how to operate the software program, Rice spent close to 25 hours writing up the program, which includes five Christmas songs.
“When you build the shows that you see, it typically takes about three hours to program every minute of music,” Rice said.
What takes the most time, he said, is going into the software and telling each controller box and its coordinating outputs when to be on or off.
There are all sorts of possibilities for creating an animation program, with one’s imagination being the limit, Rice said.
“That’s what is so neat about it, because you can take any song and animate it (with lights).”
The hours he spent programming his show don’t even include the nearly 70 hours he spent setting up the lights, which he started doing at the end of September, after work and on weekends.
Once he had everything all ready to go, he decided to do a test run right before Thanksgiving.
He plugged it all in, and nothing happened.
After some instruction from a friend, he realized his uncovered plugs were exposed to water. After painstakingly drying out each of his 128 extension-cord plugs and wrapping them with electrical tape, his light display was ready to go.
Despite the hours of hard work, Rice is hooked and plans to continue the tradition for years to come.
He has even begun planning his show for next year.
Those who come to see the lights can tune their radios to 92.1 FM for the music Rice has set up through a transmitter.
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