What I noticed when you turned on the box of lost Christmas lights was not the lack of blue, but the lack of uncomfortably blinding light. The light of the now found Christmas lights is reminiscent of the LEDs we used on the breadboards in computer science, not the current iteration of blinding LEDs. Twinkling is nice. Flashing is awful. I would liken appreciation of flashing lights to listening to the blaring of an smoke detector and calling it music.
I too appreciate the gentler light of those old LEDs, the modern ones are way too harsh, piercing and bright. Still not as good as the old incandescents though. I love soft, gentle twinkling where the lights slowly fade in and out (like fireflies), but too many people (and manufacturers) use the term wrong and call madly flashing lights 'twinkling'!
Thanks for doing these advent videos Mike. I've been working too hard and have been quite depressed so far this Christmas, we've not even put a tree or lights up this year. Your videos are a daily dose of joy.
This was so much fun to see! Thank you. I am fortunate to have next door neighbors who cherish decorating for Christmas, and I was happy to go see their lights a few days ago. Their house cannot be seen from our rural street but I can see the lights through the trees between our homes, and it's charming--something I look forward to every Christmas. Their porch wraps around the entire house where they have one fully decorated eight-foot tree by the front door and another at the back door. Inside there are two more huge trees! One in the dining room and another in the living room. Each of the trees is a different set of color co-ordinations so that they can best showcase all of the ornaments they have been gifted over the years. I was truly surprised to see how many of those had come from me, and how they made sure to put them in best places. My blessing this Christmas: my neighbors. 🎄
I was going to say the same thing, his recent YT addition showed some lovely balanced festive lighting. th-cam.com/video/qSFNufruSKw/w-d-xo.htmlsi=yvylOZlMkbZ5Vp-y
Less than an hour and under 30 comments but I see someone else has already pointed him in the direction of Technology Connections and the LED christmas light saga. Much recommended.
Something ive noticed more and more recently is that the default mode of every set of LED lights is a "cycle" mode, which cycles through all the other settings. this leads to 90% of people just pressing the on button, then walking off without realising that in about a minute's time it will cycle into the infuriating strobe mode. default mode should be constant or perhaps slow pulse.
Man, 1990 is young for Christmas lights. When my parents were alive and we had lights on our tree then were from 1970 and bought a week after I was born on November 1st. These were incandescent lights and all white. We used to get the wrappers off the quality street chocolates and use them to make them different colours. There were about 40 of them and we really enjoyed decorating the Christmas tree and lights The old tree was from the early 60's, but lasted all the way till 2015, my last ever Christmas with my family. Since then it's been Christmas alone, but hey ho. I still have memories.
I spend Christmas by myself as well since my mother died. She was the one who made Christmas what it was every year, so celebrating it without her seems wrong. Just know that you are not alone
@@Apocalypse_Promotions Yes, my mum was our Christmas rock, too. None of our other family really liked Christmas. They tolerated it for the grandkids, but that's about it. But mum did everything she could to make Christmas a joyous and happy occasion. Without her, it would have been just another day, really. Her Sunday roasts and Christmas lunches were legendary. Thanks for the reply. Sorry you are alone too.
To store Xmas lights simply roll them around a roll of Xmas wrapping paper. Use the hole in the roll to store the plug. No way to lose the lights and no issue about untangling the string.
@@carolynrichardson4286 hole in tube too small for a UK plug. Even a kitchen roll tube is probably a bit narrow. Ok for barrel jacks or other low voltage connections though!
I used to love being driven about after dark as a child this time of year,seeing little glimpses of trees and lights in people's windows. It gave me a warm feeling. I really don't like the current fashion for cold blues and whites,or the vertical drape of lights down the tree.
My already great respect for you grew exponentially when you saved the weevil. It takes a very special soul to do that, and I'm glad that my family and I aren't the only ones ❤
Good to see Charlie the Christmas Weevil make an appearance. Not Seen him since his role in the 1997 production of Driving Miss Daisy at the Hammersmith Apollo.
Thank you! This reminded me of when I was a child in the late 90s, early 00s, when every year at Christmas our family would take a walk to a particular local street that always went all out on decorations. They were mostly all lit up figures and statues about the front gardens which people had clearly spent a lot of time working on. Each house had its own theme, many different figures of reindeers and Father Christmas, but also many others. One house even had Snow White and all 7 of her dwarves!
Two thoughts: one; there’s a house in my neighborhood that goes all out with Halloween decor in their yard. This year featured a skeleton taller than the single-story house and lots of smaller skeletons around it (alternating between running away from the big one and bowing down in worship of it, quite amusing!). They seamlessly transitioned into Christmas by putting a Santa hat on the large one and a sack in his ominous hand, and the small ones have been assigned “elf/helper” duties such as writing the naughty/nice list and things like this. It’s probably my favorite house to walk by with my dog and there are frequent, small changes to the tableau that advance the story being told. 😂 Second thing; I watched a very interesting video here on TH-cam (possibly from Veritasium but I can’t go check without erasing my comment) that was a deep dive into the invention of blue and white LEDs, which was surprisingly complicated. Obviously it did eventually get discovered, but the path to getting there was extremely difficult and something I’d never given much thought to. If I can find it, I’ll try to come back and leave the title! Yes, it was Veritasium! The title is “Why it was almost impossible to make the blue LED.”
I love seeing all the lights. When I was a kid a town next to the town my grandparents lived had one street called Christmas tree lane. Every house was decorated and those were over the top. They all had different animated people or animals. One house had skaters coming in and out of their living room skating on a big iced pond. Thanks for taking us a long I never get tired of looking at all the lights.
I just saw a Reddit post suggesting for neighbors on a street all put up the same strings of individually addressable LEDs with a central house hosting a Raspberry Pi that controls the entire light setup and coordinates the block's lights for one, single light show.
I adore Christmas lights, but as a chronic migraine sufferer the flashing and the blue are not something I can cope with. I really wish people would keep the flashing inside their own houses, it’s a hazard. I have sat at traffic lights before now with my hands over my eyes trying to avoid looking and getting triggered and just peeking out at the signal. Twinkle isn’t too bad but the strobe is just mean. I love those old style lights with a frosted glass cover that diffuses the light source. Excellent video again, thank you Shrimp family.
LOL. We had the little pointy bulbs for the tree from the 80's and outside some of the old walnut shaped lights on string from the 70's. My cousin had the chasing lights on her tree.Later I just had a fiberoptic mini-tree,because of cats. Where I live now is so poor they probably have ancient lights,too.People do put up a tree or a string even though few people can afford much.One businessman makes up for it with a massive yard display he hires his employees or others to put up.The"snowflakes" may be stars. My favorite decoration was a ball of stapled clear plastic cups each with part of a chasing light set .I learned to make it at a fraternal organization my dad belonged too. Thx for the show.
A self-inflating Santa? 😯I won't even ask. Thanks for taking us on a Christmas lights tour! I quite agree that the warmer colors, gently twinkling, are far more pleasing than madly flashing effects. Your dining room garland is just right.
Those look waaay better than most LED Christmas lights you see out today! I still use incandescent bulbs. But to be honest I appreciate anyone still putting up Christmas lights.
Oh my goodness, the nostalgia! Thank you for a lovely video. They are kind of fairy lights our parents used as kids in the 90s looked just like this, only I'd completely forgotten until you should your ones. What a wonderful feeling of being taken back in time to happy childhood memories. Thank you!
A number of years ago I went on a tinsel and turkey break in Scotland and across the road from the hotel was a garden display which I felt was ideal. The householder had made a design on the ground in the form of a sunburst made of stripes on blue slate pieces alternating with pieces of a white crystalline stone and in the centre they had planted and shaped a ball shaped bush about 18 inches in diameter but grown as a 6foot tall standard tree/bush that was covered with small red berries and dark green leaves and then they had covered the ball with a net of red led’s so that in the daylight you only noticed the berries but by night with the led’s turned on the whole garden bed was illuminated in red which reflected off the white crystals and the lights also gave the impression that the ball had many more berries on it. It was located in the village of Lomond and adjacent to the local post office.
It's Christmas, It's lights, all colors, All Good. There is joy in seeing them all. Put your favorite colors out and Have a Merry Christmas; 6 days to go...
We have someone opposite my house who puts up white and blue flashing lights every year. Every time I come downstairs I think the police are outside the house and it puts me on edge.
This is one of my favourites in the calendar so far. I love looking at Christmas lights, and my siblings and I have a tradition of going around the neighbourhood on Christmas Eve looking at lights. This just makes me so happy!!
I so wish I had a front garden or even a narrow fenced off from the public path that I could decorate. But the front of my home is on the main road of the village which are a long row of terrace houses. Unfortunately if I put something pretty on my doorstep don’t think it would be there very long 😔. Thank you for showing us your area with pretty twinkling lights.
My dad still has a couple strings of those. They're a little dim, but functional. It's fun to check out the lights in the neighborhood. Dad's still in the house we bought 50+ years ago. This year more houses are decorated than have been for a while. In the late 70s everyone decorated, including the house on the corner where a Jewish family lived. They had blue lights outside, which is the official town color, and a "Hanukkah bush" with multiple color lights in the living room window. Always very festive. That same house has a new family in now. They are the instigators for the rest of the neighborhood, decorating for every season. Christmas is wild with blow up everything from Santa to a jazz band of snowmen. Even without seasonal decorations they have a tiny gnome with park bench and a solar powered streetlamp under the shrub on the corner of the lot. He's a hit with all the little kids going by in strollers!
I wish I had a video of how my parents used to decorate. They had lights everywhere and used to mount a fully fledged Christmas tree out in the front garden, on top of their caravan, it was locally famous. LOL Unfortunately, they cannot do it now because of their health, and I'm neither well enough, nor close enough, to do it myself.
I have some lights the same as yours and am eternally glad that i also kept spare bulbs too . Very precious and nostalgic ❤ Mine are not LED as they get warm but can't remember how old they are.
Opportunistic fyi - something to be aware of about those laser projectors is that green lasers are almost always diode pumped crystal lasers, which is to say they're a very high powered infrared laser shining through a special set of crystals that converts that light into green light but also sprays out a ton of potentially hazardous IR light that you can't see (since the IR laser power is way higher). Cheap green laser products often don't filter that out sufficiently, and IIRC a green laser projector like that was one of the examples that braniac75 has featured on his channel, so be mindful of reflections if/when setting those up (and side activity, looking at those displays with most phone cameras might reveal a secret third colour!)
What is nice is the bigger 15w bulbs that are yellows and reds which give it a more warmish vibe rather than the small flashing blue and white colder lights. You tend to see them more in the Christmas markets. They just feel more Christmassy to me.
The multicoloured lights reflected on your ceiling look uncannily like the pictures my friends keep showing me of the aurora borealis, I've yet to see the real thing so this has made up for it!
Here in northern finland it's more like 'winter lights', most people put them up in october and let them be until the end of january. I much prefer non-blinking varieties, but had to leave off my own because I'm trying not to go over the electricity budget. What a lovely walk though!
This was a great vlog for me tonight. A friend and I went for a drive to see the Christmas lights around my town. Was great to see yours as well. Thankyou
bit of a random question, growing up in America my parents (and grandparents) had Christmas lights that were made in the shape of candles on a tree, but in a wide variety of colors and with bubbling water flowing through the ‘candles’, do you know if those were ever popular in the UK? think they were called ‘bubble lights’. I used to stay up way past my bedtime, watching them bubble away softly in the den.
In the UK we had 'Pifco Tube Lites' think they arrived about 1959, there were not many to a set, maybe only 8. So the bulbs would have been rated around 30V to work on our 240V supply. Each one was like a miniature lava lamp but with different liquids inside, they took a few minutes to warm up and start bubbling.
About 5 years ago I got into the whole individually addressable LED lights with an ESP32 controller. My living room windows are ringed with a full 300 pixel string with another 300 in my china hutch and part of the bookcase while the bedroom window sports 150 lights and the headboard has a string of 144. The kitchen has a cobbled-together string of 50 lights split between the two windows. The natural progression was to buy three strings of 50 lights for the Christmas tree and I bought them in time for last Christmas. After the holidays, I put them away in the apartment building's storage unit. When I went to get them out at the beginning of December, the lights (and my prized Santa hat) were missing. I had to order three new strings of lights and a new controller. Spent just over $50 getting new lights. 😡 The upside is that I've learned a few new tricks and have automated all my lights to automatically come on 30 seconds after sunset and rotate between three patterns of blinky blinky scenes for about 6 hours, then shut off automagically at 9 pm for the bedroom and 10:30 pm for the living room. The lights are controlled by WLED on three different ESP32 devices and the automation is controlled by Home Assistant.
Surrendering snowman gave me a giggle. Thanks. Interesting to see some differences between US and UK on holiday lighting. Here some choose simple (that would be us, I don't care for multicolor lights or flashing as the flashing makes me uncomfortable), for others it is a world of lights and chaos. LOL. Loads of blow up lighted decorations, lights everywhere, some do the music and light "shows". Lasers are also common. I'm sure you have seen Christmas Vacation. We have far more places here that try to take on Clark Griswold.
There's a locally famous place in my area in Magnolia, TX called the Gullo House (The owner runs a car dealership or something.) and every year it's decorated with Christmas lights to an absurd degree. Pretty sure there are TH-cam videos of it.
My christmas lights are ye old incandecent kind, but they do have an extra colour, purple (well kind of mauve actually). The tree we used to hang them on however is long gone, so they're still in the box. I do feel like if they're going to blink a slow twinkle is preferable to the stark blinking that most seem to have these days.
It struck me how thick the wire is on the 90s lights compared with modern lights. I wonder if it's because they were still using the wiring for incandescent lights which would be using more power than is needed for led lights or whether maybe early leds used a bit more power than newer ones? As time goes on everything is becoming more power efficient but I think to a large extent materials like wiring used is becoming cheaper lower quality thinner cables to keep the costs down. I doubt if any modern lighting even uses copper in the wires anymore.
The wires on this set comprise a bundle of strands that gradually thins out along the chain - I think it's so that one or more of the flash/fade modes can control multiple groups of lights
Hello mr shrimp. I feel obliged to tell you since your the veg master that with nectar cards and various club cards Sainsbury’s Tesco Morrisons and aldi are all doing them for just 15p this covers stuff like a decent size bag of potato’s sprouts parsnips carrots etc it’s worth a look and hope you can add these cheap items to your much anticipated Christmas dinner.
I love seeing christmas lights as does my son so we go on a christmas walk to look at the lights round our area too! I wholeheartedly agree- I ove a christmas tree in a bay window. What bemuses me with christmas lights is the manic panic flash setting. Why? Just why? They're not pleasing to the eye and I'm surprised that they are allowed due to being a potential hazard to those with light sensitive epilepsy.
You brining up the blue led's reminds me of Technology Connections video on a brand of "retro" christmas lights that are led, but look really good. I forget if they have blue though, but he was saying that he liked them because they didn't have a "pierching" look to them. So maything somthing to look into. Personally, I like having christmas lights with a couple blue lights, but this is coming from childhood memories when my parents had the larger incandescent bulbs of all different colors.
I have two sets of old fairy lights (which are my favourite style by a long margin) that I want to take the glass tops off and stick over some warm white leds to hopefully get a nice effect that mimics the originals but not sure how to go about cutting the tiny glass bulbs safely.
There might be a lot more to it than that. Incandescent lights can run directly off alternating current. And if you put enough of them in series, it can be mains voltage across the string. You can _sort of_ do the same with LEDs, but because they are diodes, they will only light for half of the wave of the alternating current (so they'll flicker, perhaps not noticeably), but also you need current limiting resistors. Short version: white LEDs are not likely to be drop-in replacements for incandescent bulbs
@ I only know enough about electricity to know I don’t want to mess with it. I just want to take the glass shell off the fairy light bulb(snapping the top off and discarding the gubbins) and place it over the white led like a colourful glass hat so I wouldn’t be rewiring anything , just trying to cleanly break the top off a lot of fairy lights safely and neatly.
Ahh. I see what you mean. I think that might be difficult. Have you seen the TH-cam channel Technology Connections? He's been doing various things to try to make white LEDs look vintage for a few years now. This year he found some ready made ones he was pretty happy with.
@ yes I’m glad he’s so close to his perfect set of lights, it seems like such an obvious product to me I don’t know why it’s not the main way to make coloured led lights, I guess if you grew up with colour led rather than incandescent you don’t have the nostalgia and may prefer the” cleaner “ colour of leds?
I was in my 20s when blue LEDs came along, and I had been interested in hobby electronics as a teen, so I was fascinated to see blue LEDs arrive, but we quite soon went through an uncomfortable phase where every piece of consumer electronics had to have at least one piercingly-bright blue LED on it. I don't mind the pure spectral colours of LEDs in fact I think they look quite pretty when the intensity is properly balanced. We've got a set of outdoor lights I bought this year that are red, green, amber and blue, but the LEDs are enclosed in little translucent white spheres that diffuse and soften the light very nicely and evenly and they look quite festive and cheerful to me - they remind me of a miniature version of the strings of coloured incandescent globe lights that you sometimes see strung around a pub garden or at a carnival.
I do not like blue LEDs, too bright. But the blue in the light decoration on the ground fit, was a beautiful setup. That would be something I would have had lit thru the whole dark season.
The biggest problem with Christmas in Australia is if you want to see the lights you need to walk around at 10pm. 9 if you don't mind seeing them against twilight. Not fun with small children. There's a small movement for Xmas in July, but not enough people set up lights then
I loved this entry! I used to drive my little boy around at this time of year to see the local Christmas lights. So exciting for him, going out at night! -- about five pm! Dark by then in this region.
I loathe those eye-searing blue lights. I don’t think blue is a Christmas colour anyway, but that’s just a personal preference. I love your vintage-looking LEDs.
Please, you would love the recent video by Technology Connections! They go into extensive detail about why rgb christmas lights are not the way to go and how that can be fixed, I feel like that would be just up your alley!
What I noticed when you turned on the box of lost Christmas lights was not the lack of blue, but the lack of uncomfortably blinding light. The light of the now found Christmas lights is reminiscent of the LEDs we used on the breadboards in computer science, not the current iteration of blinding LEDs.
Twinkling is nice. Flashing is awful. I would liken appreciation of flashing lights to listening to the blaring of an smoke detector and calling it music.
I too appreciate the gentler light of those old LEDs, the modern ones are way too harsh, piercing and bright. Still not as good as the old incandescents though.
I love soft, gentle twinkling where the lights slowly fade in and out (like fireflies), but too many people (and manufacturers) use the term wrong and call madly flashing lights 'twinkling'!
I do love flashing lights but oh, the migraine!
Taking that bug outside was so kind of you. Not many people seem to do that and I appreciate anyone who does.
Thanks for doing these advent videos Mike. I've been working too hard and have been quite depressed so far this Christmas, we've not even put a tree or lights up this year. Your videos are a daily dose of joy.
This was so much fun to see! Thank you. I am fortunate to have next door neighbors who cherish decorating for Christmas, and I was happy to go see their lights a few days ago. Their house cannot be seen from our rural street but I can see the lights through the trees between our homes, and it's charming--something I look forward to every Christmas. Their porch wraps around the entire house where they have one fully decorated eight-foot tree by the front door and another at the back door. Inside there are two more huge trees! One in the dining room and another in the living room. Each of the trees is a different set of color co-ordinations so that they can best showcase all of the ornaments they have been gifted over the years. I was truly surprised to see how many of those had come from me, and how they made sure to put them in best places. My blessing this Christmas: my neighbors. 🎄
Of course Technology Connections wouldn't mind the lack of piercing blue too much.
I was going to say the same thing, his recent YT addition showed some lovely balanced festive lighting.
th-cam.com/video/qSFNufruSKw/w-d-xo.htmlsi=yvylOZlMkbZ5Vp-y
Less than an hour and under 30 comments but I see someone else has already pointed him in the direction of Technology Connections and the LED christmas light saga. Much recommended.
Alex is totally right though about the stabby LEDs.
He thinks the 4 colours are _"right"_
I really want to see a crossover special with TechMoan. Ooh! and BigClive.
1:07 that's definitely the lesser of two weevils.
😂😅😂
"He who would pun would pick a pocket, sir."
@@SlartiMarvinbartfast "To wives and sweethearts!"
@@SlartiMarvinbartfast Ha ha... Just re-finished Blue at the Mizzen...
Cordialement.
Hear no weevil, speak no weevil.
Something ive noticed more and more recently is that the default mode of every set of LED lights is a "cycle" mode, which cycles through all the other settings. this leads to 90% of people just pressing the on button, then walking off without realising that in about a minute's time it will cycle into the infuriating strobe mode.
default mode should be constant or perhaps slow pulse.
In my area of the USA I've seen a few people lay their lights on the ground, and when it snows atop of the lights, they look absolutely amazing.
I'd worry about them getting stepped on.
@@thummumcrysanth Nah, they do it on their front lawn where no one walks.
Man, 1990 is young for Christmas lights. When my parents were alive and we had lights on our tree then were from 1970 and bought a week after I was born on November 1st. These were incandescent lights and all white. We used to get the wrappers off the quality street chocolates and use them to make them different colours. There were about 40 of them and we really enjoyed decorating the Christmas tree and lights The old tree was from the early 60's, but lasted all the way till 2015, my last ever Christmas with my family. Since then it's been Christmas alone, but hey ho. I still have memories.
Merry Christmas to you! Thank you for sharing your memories with me. I will be sending you warm wishes this holiday season.🎄
I spend Christmas by myself as well since my mother died. She was the one who made Christmas what it was every year, so celebrating it without her seems wrong.
Just know that you are not alone
@@janna9735 Thank you and I hope you and your family have a great Christmas too.
@@Apocalypse_Promotions Yes, my mum was our Christmas rock, too. None of our other family really liked Christmas. They tolerated it for the grandkids, but that's about it. But mum did everything she could to make Christmas a joyous and happy occasion. Without her, it would have been just another day, really. Her Sunday roasts and Christmas lunches were legendary. Thanks for the reply. Sorry you are alone too.
To store Xmas lights simply roll them around a roll of Xmas wrapping paper. Use the hole in the roll to store the plug. No way to lose the lights and no issue about untangling the string.
Thats quite smart
@@carolynrichardson4286 hole in tube too small for a UK plug. Even a kitchen roll tube is probably a bit narrow. Ok for barrel jacks or other low voltage connections though!
Shrimp, these videos are amazing. They’re like little ports in the storm of Christmas and finals! Thank you so much!
What a wonderfully cozy video. Thank you for this
I used to love being driven about after dark as a child this time of year,seeing little glimpses of trees and lights in people's windows. It gave me a warm feeling. I really don't like the current fashion for cold blues and whites,or the vertical drape of lights down the tree.
Me too. Did you also go downtown to check out the shop windows?
@Desertthorn11 there was always a good tree in the shopping highstreet,with a band playing Christmas carols.
I like it when lights twinkle but not like it when they flash. I find it a bit irritating.
Watch out for when the trees start walking. That is when it gets really trippy!
I like people putting up Christmas lights.
My already great respect for you grew exponentially when you saved the weevil.
It takes a very special soul to do that, and I'm glad that my family and I aren't the only ones ❤
Reminds me of mopping the floor at work. I'm always having to rescue lost creepy crawlies !
I always do that too!
Good to see Charlie the Christmas Weevil make an appearance. Not Seen him since his role in the 1997 production of Driving Miss Daisy at the Hammersmith Apollo.
😂
Thank you! This reminded me of when I was a child in the late 90s, early 00s, when every year at Christmas our family would take a walk to a particular local street that always went all out on decorations. They were mostly all lit up figures and statues about the front gardens which people had clearly spent a lot of time working on. Each house had its own theme, many different figures of reindeers and Father Christmas, but also many others. One house even had Snow White and all 7 of her dwarves!
It feels so cozy! I have amber and green, it feels less garish. Happy holidys to your hapy family.
Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good Light!
Two thoughts: one; there’s a house in my neighborhood that goes all out with Halloween decor in their yard. This year featured a skeleton taller than the single-story house and lots of smaller skeletons around it (alternating between running away from the big one and bowing down in worship of it, quite amusing!). They seamlessly transitioned into Christmas by putting a Santa hat on the large one and a sack in his ominous hand, and the small ones have been assigned “elf/helper” duties such as writing the naughty/nice list and things like this. It’s probably my favorite house to walk by with my dog and there are frequent, small changes to the tableau that advance the story being told. 😂
Second thing; I watched a very interesting video here on TH-cam (possibly from Veritasium but I can’t go check without erasing my comment) that was a deep dive into the invention of blue and white LEDs, which was surprisingly complicated. Obviously it did eventually get discovered, but the path to getting there was extremely difficult and something I’d never given much thought to. If I can find it, I’ll try to come back and leave the title!
Yes, it was Veritasium! The title is “Why it was almost impossible to make the blue LED.”
I love seeing all the lights. When I was a kid a town next to the town my grandparents lived had one street called Christmas tree lane. Every house was decorated and those were over the top. They all had different animated people or animals. One house had skaters coming in and out of their living room skating on a big iced pond. Thanks for taking us a long I never get tired of looking at all the lights.
I just saw a Reddit post suggesting for neighbors on a street all put up the same strings of individually addressable LEDs with a central house hosting a Raspberry Pi that controls the entire light setup and coordinates the block's lights for one, single light show.
@ what a great idea.
I adore Christmas lights, but as a chronic migraine sufferer the flashing and the blue are not something I can cope with. I really wish people would keep the flashing inside their own houses, it’s a hazard. I have sat at traffic lights before now with my hands over my eyes trying to avoid looking and getting triggered and just peeking out at the signal. Twinkle isn’t too bad but the strobe is just mean. I love those old style lights with a frosted glass cover that diffuses the light source. Excellent video again, thank you Shrimp family.
I love light looking!! Thanks so much.
LOL. We had the little pointy bulbs for the tree from the 80's and outside some of the old walnut shaped lights on string from the 70's. My cousin had the chasing lights on her tree.Later I just had a fiberoptic mini-tree,because of cats. Where I live now is so poor they probably have ancient lights,too.People do put up a tree or a string even though few people can afford much.One businessman makes up for it with a massive yard display he hires his employees or others to put up.The"snowflakes" may be stars. My favorite decoration was a ball of stapled clear plastic cups each with part of a chasing light set .I learned to make it at a fraternal organization my dad belonged too. Thx for the show.
Lovely, thank you. May your day be Merry and Bright.
A self-inflating Santa? 😯I won't even ask. Thanks for taking us on a Christmas lights tour! I quite agree that the warmer colors, gently twinkling, are far more pleasing than madly flashing effects. Your dining room garland is just right.
I like a more warm-toned color sceme for Christmas. It reminds on real candels.
Those look waaay better than most LED Christmas lights you see out today! I still use incandescent bulbs. But to be honest I appreciate anyone still putting up Christmas lights.
I really enjoyed this little tour! ❤️
Oh my goodness, the nostalgia! Thank you for a lovely video. They are kind of fairy lights our parents used as kids in the 90s looked just like this, only I'd completely forgotten until you should your ones. What a wonderful feeling of being taken back in time to happy childhood memories. Thank you!
Great idea to show Christmas lights in the area. I enjoyed it very much. Thank you. 😊
A number of years ago I went on a tinsel and turkey break in Scotland and across the road from the hotel was a garden display which I felt was ideal. The householder had made a design on the ground in the form of a sunburst made of stripes on blue slate pieces alternating with pieces of a white crystalline stone and in the centre they had planted and shaped a ball shaped bush about 18 inches in diameter but grown as a 6foot tall standard tree/bush that was covered with small red berries and dark green leaves and then they had covered the ball with a net of red led’s so that in the daylight you only noticed the berries but by night with the led’s turned on the whole garden bed was illuminated in red which reflected off the white crystals and the lights also gave the impression that the ball had many more berries on it. It was located in the village of Lomond and adjacent to the local post office.
It's Christmas, It's lights, all colors, All Good. There is joy in seeing them all. Put your favorite colors out and Have a Merry Christmas; 6 days to go...
We have someone opposite my house who puts up white and blue flashing lights every year.
Every time I come downstairs I think the police are outside the house and it puts me on edge.
Sounds like a guilty conscience...
Hehehe 😂
I feel you 😅
9:46 "A surrendering snowman"☃️⛄ Can't stop laughing at that
This is one of my favourites in the calendar so far. I love looking at Christmas lights, and my siblings and I have a tradition of going around the neighbourhood on Christmas Eve looking at lights. This just makes me so happy!!
I so wish I had a front garden or even a narrow fenced off from the public path that I could decorate. But the front of my home is on the main road of the village which are a long row of terrace houses. Unfortunately if I put something pretty on my doorstep don’t think it would be there very long 😔. Thank you for showing us your area with pretty twinkling lights.
Happy Christmas to you and yours Mike 🎄🎅 have a good one,look forward to what next year brings 😊
Morning & Merry Christmas 🎄🎅Love Christmas lights on the outside but where l live ,there would be stolen ☹️Thanks for sharing Mike n Jenny 😊👍
I've got a string of lights from the late 70s, still working and still in the original box that my late parents bought when I was a child.
My dad still has a couple strings of those. They're a little dim, but functional. It's fun to check out the lights in the neighborhood. Dad's still in the house we bought 50+ years ago. This year more houses are decorated than have been for a while. In the late 70s everyone decorated, including the house on the corner where a Jewish family lived. They had blue lights outside, which is the official town color, and a "Hanukkah bush" with multiple color lights in the living room window. Always very festive. That same house has a new family in now. They are the instigators for the rest of the neighborhood, decorating for every season. Christmas is wild with blow up everything from Santa to a jazz band of snowmen. Even without seasonal decorations they have a tiny gnome with park bench and a solar powered streetlamp under the shrub on the corner of the lot. He's a hit with all the little kids going by in strollers!
Call me weird but that is just such a cool set of lights. Even when turned off, those bulky leds look so retro and characterful
I prefer the strings without the blue, it is such a cold, unfriendly light. The amber/green/red is so much nicer
Thank you for this.
The start of your advent intro music somehow reminds me of the theme tune to Keeping Up Appearances.
Interesting. It reminds me of Antiques Roadshow.
Love seeing the Christmas lights, thank you!
“They’re on Ted..no now they’re off, on again Ted, now off again..on, off, on, off”
Much better than the ones with blue, looking amazing
I wish I had a video of how my parents used to decorate. They had lights everywhere and used to mount a fully fledged Christmas tree out in the front garden, on top of their caravan, it was locally famous. LOL Unfortunately, they cannot do it now because of their health, and I'm neither well enough, nor close enough, to do it myself.
I have some lights the same as yours and am eternally glad that i also kept spare bulbs too . Very precious and nostalgic ❤
Mine are not LED as they get warm but can't remember how old they are.
Happy Holidays! 🎉🎄
PS... We enjoy your videos 😃❤️🖖
Blue LEDs strike me as perfect for putting on the ground, as snow often looks blue especially when shadowed.
Opportunistic fyi - something to be aware of about those laser projectors is that green lasers are almost always diode pumped crystal lasers, which is to say they're a very high powered infrared laser shining through a special set of crystals that converts that light into green light but also sprays out a ton of potentially hazardous IR light that you can't see (since the IR laser power is way higher). Cheap green laser products often don't filter that out sufficiently, and IIRC a green laser projector like that was one of the examples that braniac75 has featured on his channel, so be mindful of reflections if/when setting those up (and side activity, looking at those displays with most phone cameras might reveal a secret third colour!)
I really enjoyed this
Their lack of overall blinding strength would be great nestled into a Christmas Tree, peeking out behind ornaments.
What is nice is the bigger 15w bulbs that are yellows and reds which give it a more warmish vibe rather than the small flashing blue and white colder lights.
You tend to see them more in the Christmas markets.
They just feel more Christmassy to me.
lol at the end - quite the mixture of Christmas lights - anything goes at christmas
Really nice, really wholesome
Static all the way for me.
I do find the flashing ones awfully common.
Makes me want to go for a walk one night to check out the nearby streets. We use projectors as our outdoor lights
Lovely , merry Christmas 🎄
There is a close near to me which has so many lights it is almost like daytime when it is dark !
In our town we have someone who does an amazing display and collects money for charity. I love taking the kids along :D
The multicoloured lights reflected on your ceiling look uncannily like the pictures my friends keep showing me of the aurora borealis, I've yet to see the real thing so this has made up for it!
Here in northern finland it's more like 'winter lights', most people put them up in october and let them be until the end of january. I much prefer non-blinking varieties, but had to leave off my own because I'm trying not to go over the electricity budget. What a lovely walk though!
No blue, no blinking, just nice amber colour. Totally enough!
This was a great vlog for me tonight. A friend and I went for a drive to see the Christmas lights around my town. Was great to see yours as well. Thankyou
bit of a random question, growing up in America my parents (and grandparents) had Christmas lights that were made in the shape of candles on a tree, but in a wide variety of colors and with bubbling water flowing through the ‘candles’, do you know if those were ever popular in the UK? think they were called ‘bubble lights’. I used to stay up way past my bedtime, watching them bubble away softly in the den.
I never saw them here. First time was on Technology Connections
In the UK we had 'Pifco Tube Lites' think they arrived about 1959, there were not many to a set, maybe only 8. So the bulbs would have been rated around 30V to work on our 240V supply. Each one was like a miniature lava lamp but with different liquids inside, they took a few minutes to warm up and start bubbling.
Oh, we had those, too, in the fifties.
They take me back to my childhood 😊🎉
About 5 years ago I got into the whole individually addressable LED lights with an ESP32 controller. My living room windows are ringed with a full 300 pixel string with another 300 in my china hutch and part of the bookcase while the bedroom window sports 150 lights and the headboard has a string of 144. The kitchen has a cobbled-together string of 50 lights split between the two windows.
The natural progression was to buy three strings of 50 lights for the Christmas tree and I bought them in time for last Christmas. After the holidays, I put them away in the apartment building's storage unit. When I went to get them out at the beginning of December, the lights (and my prized Santa hat) were missing. I had to order three new strings of lights and a new controller. Spent just over $50 getting new lights. 😡
The upside is that I've learned a few new tricks and have automated all my lights to automatically come on 30 seconds after sunset and rotate between three patterns of blinky blinky scenes for about 6 hours, then shut off automagically at 9 pm for the bedroom and 10:30 pm for the living room.
The lights are controlled by WLED on three different ESP32 devices and the automation is controlled by Home Assistant.
Surrendering snowman gave me a giggle. Thanks. Interesting to see some differences between US and UK on holiday lighting. Here some choose simple (that would be us, I don't care for multicolor lights or flashing as the flashing makes me uncomfortable), for others it is a world of lights and chaos. LOL. Loads of blow up lighted decorations, lights everywhere, some do the music and light "shows". Lasers are also common. I'm sure you have seen Christmas Vacation. We have far more places here that try to take on Clark Griswold.
There's a locally famous place in my area in Magnolia, TX called the Gullo House (The owner runs a car dealership or something.) and every year it's decorated with Christmas lights to an absurd degree. Pretty sure there are TH-cam videos of it.
My christmas lights are ye old incandecent kind, but they do have an extra colour, purple (well kind of mauve actually). The tree we used to hang them on however is long gone, so they're still in the box. I do feel like if they're going to blink a slow twinkle is preferable to the stark blinking that most seem to have these days.
It struck me how thick the wire is on the 90s lights compared with modern lights. I wonder if it's because they were still using the wiring for incandescent lights which would be using more power than is needed for led lights or whether maybe early leds used a bit more power than newer ones? As time goes on everything is becoming more power efficient but I think to a large extent materials like wiring used is becoming cheaper lower quality thinner cables to keep the costs down. I doubt if any modern lighting even uses copper in the wires anymore.
The wires on this set comprise a bundle of strands that gradually thins out along the chain - I think it's so that one or more of the flash/fade modes can control multiple groups of lights
Hello mr shrimp. I feel obliged to tell you since your the veg master that with nectar cards and various club cards Sainsbury’s Tesco Morrisons and aldi are all doing them for just 15p this covers stuff like a decent size bag of potato’s sprouts parsnips carrots etc it’s worth a look and hope you can add these cheap items to your much anticipated Christmas dinner.
I love seeing christmas lights as does my son so we go on a christmas walk to look at the lights round our area too! I wholeheartedly agree- I ove a christmas tree in a bay window.
What bemuses me with christmas lights is the manic panic flash setting. Why? Just why? They're not pleasing to the eye and I'm surprised that they are allowed due to being a potential hazard to those with light sensitive epilepsy.
You brining up the blue led's reminds me of Technology Connections video on a brand of "retro" christmas lights that are led, but look really good. I forget if they have blue though, but he was saying that he liked them because they didn't have a "pierching" look to them. So maything somthing to look into.
Personally, I like having christmas lights with a couple blue lights, but this is coming from childhood memories when my parents had the larger incandescent bulbs of all different colors.
I have two sets of old fairy lights (which are my favourite style by a long margin) that I want to take the glass tops off and stick over some warm white leds to hopefully get a nice effect that mimics the originals but not sure how to go about cutting the tiny glass bulbs safely.
There might be a lot more to it than that. Incandescent lights can run directly off alternating current. And if you put enough of them in series, it can be mains voltage across the string.
You can _sort of_ do the same with LEDs, but because they are diodes, they will only light for half of the wave of the alternating current (so they'll flicker, perhaps not noticeably), but also you need current limiting resistors. Short version: white LEDs are not likely to be drop-in replacements for incandescent bulbs
@ I only know enough about electricity to know I don’t want to mess with it. I just want to take the glass shell off the fairy light bulb(snapping the top off and discarding the gubbins) and place it over the white led like a colourful glass hat so I wouldn’t be rewiring anything , just trying to cleanly break the top off a lot of fairy lights safely and neatly.
Ahh. I see what you mean. I think that might be difficult. Have you seen the TH-cam channel Technology Connections? He's been doing various things to try to make white LEDs look vintage for a few years now. This year he found some ready made ones he was pretty happy with.
@ yes I’m glad he’s so close to his perfect set of lights, it seems like such an obvious product to me I don’t know why it’s not the main way to make coloured led lights, I guess if you grew up with colour led rather than incandescent you don’t have the nostalgia and may prefer the” cleaner “ colour of leds?
I was in my 20s when blue LEDs came along, and I had been interested in hobby electronics as a teen, so I was fascinated to see blue LEDs arrive, but we quite soon went through an uncomfortable phase where every piece of consumer electronics had to have at least one piercingly-bright blue LED on it.
I don't mind the pure spectral colours of LEDs in fact I think they look quite pretty when the intensity is properly balanced. We've got a set of outdoor lights I bought this year that are red, green, amber and blue, but the LEDs are enclosed in little translucent white spheres that diffuse and soften the light very nicely and evenly and they look quite festive and cheerful to me - they remind me of a miniature version of the strings of coloured incandescent globe lights that you sometimes see strung around a pub garden or at a carnival.
I do not like blue LEDs, too bright. But the blue in the light decoration on the ground fit, was a beautiful setup. That would be something I would have had lit thru the whole dark season.
The biggest problem with Christmas in Australia is if you want to see the lights you need to walk around at 10pm. 9 if you don't mind seeing them against twilight. Not fun with small children. There's a small movement for Xmas in July, but not enough people set up lights then
At the very start of this video I thought I was watching a Big Clive video....
I loved this entry! I used to drive my little boy around at this time of year to see the local Christmas lights. So exciting for him, going out at night! -- about five pm! Dark by then in this region.
We dont have neighbours so thankyou for sharing yours
That's not a surrendering snowman. He's performing a kirtan for Lord Krishna!
14:28 No commentary, just "ah, OK". 😂 I guess whatever floats your boat but I am glad my neighbors house does not flash like this.
I like that you respect all life; I do the same with spiders!
12:55 i really like that one.
💗💗💗
There is a fantastic story about blue LED's and the discoverer.
I loathe those eye-searing blue lights. I don’t think blue is a Christmas colour anyway, but that’s just a personal preference. I love your vintage-looking LEDs.
We used to call baubels Wessel/Wassail cups, in Yorkshire at least
😂 yellow snow 😂 ..... my bad 🤣
💜
😂 yellow snow! Ha ha - dont eat it! 😊
The first house gave me vibes of an angry monster with a gaping maw.
Surrendering snowman...that sleighed me. ; )
Morning!
hvala lijepo efendi mihajlo
Please, you would love the recent video by Technology Connections! They go into extensive detail about why rgb christmas lights are not the way to go and how that can be fixed, I feel like that would be just up your alley!
I can hear Alec from Technology Connections heavy breathing from somewhere xDDD
hi everyone:)
Veritassium has a whole video about the history of blue LEDs. Highly recommend