Do you do anything special or unique with your display for Christmas Eve / week before Christmas?

ryanschristmaslights

ryanschristmaslights

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Thought it might be cool to share what special events or features are part of our displays on limited nights, particularly Christmas Eve or the last few nights before Christmas.

I set up a projector and run Virtual Santa just on Christmas Eve:
xmas22-christmaseve-virtualsantainwindow.jpg
(the projector projects from inside and means this room has to stay dark ... one reason I only set it up for one night a year!)

Additionally for the past two years the night before Christmas Eve (23rd) I have been lucky to have had a brass band offer to play carols for 1 hour:
xmas22-dec23-brassbandcrowd.jpg
(I run a silent animation that loops every five minutes and have an xSchedule button set up via the web UI to go back to my show's regular playlist that I press once the band has finished)

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So what do you do? Perhaps you run a special Christmas Eve sequence, dress up in a Santa suit that night, or something else? 😀
 
I turn off FM transmission due to the number of cars and turn up the music outside, we usually have so many people the sound is drowned out when it's too low. Nothing particularly special. I will bring a few more warning signs out on the street asking people to drive slow however.

Edit: This year our neighbours came over in Grinch costumes, was a huge hit with everybody
 
For Christmas Eve I swap out my 4 20 minute playlist rotation to a 1 hour 40 minute playlist with everything, then repeat that on shuffle once.
For NYE I have a full count down and everything.
 
Freman said:
For Christmas Eve I swap out my 4 20 minute playlist rotation to a 1 hour 40 minute playlist with everything, then repeat that on shuffle once.
For NYE I have a full count down and everything.
Click to expand...
I had thought about this, how do you coordinate the countdown timer? Have you scheduled it to start at a specific time in FPP? or used a script for the countdown sequence to start at the right time?

I had thought this would be a great idea but am worried it loses its effect if my 10sec countdown is 10secs early or late! 😂
 
Pyjamas said:
I had thought about this, how do you coordinate the countdown timer? Have you scheduled it to start at a specific time in FPP? or used a script for the countdown sequence to start at the right time?

I had thought this would be a great idea but am worried it loses its effect if my 10sec countdown is 10secs early or late! 😂
Click to expand...
Well, last year I tried to math an entire playlist, this year I plan to just force one playlist to stop and start another shortly before the countdown
 
Christmas Eve, we meet again! What if anything have you got planned to do different tonight compared to others? Do you extend your show hours or do anything else special (I don't know, maybe Santa visits your show)? 😀


I'll run my lights til 11 tonight instead of the usual 10:30 pm. Also Christmas Eve is the only night I have a Virtual Santa projection.

Last night (Christmas eve...eve?) was a carols night with a local brass band. This is the third year for this and the crowd is growing. For this night I run an animation sequence that loops every 5 minutes.
xmas23---carols-night-band.jpg xmas23---carols-night-crowd.jpg
 
As usual, the week before Christmas we run an hour later than usual, to 11:30PM. Pray for good weather and say hello to everybody who visits. Last year we had the Grinch visit from next door (no, not an angry neighbour they were dressed up) and that made a lot of the children happy. Hoping to have it happen again tonight.
 
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