PM360 recently spoke to Dan Gandor of EVERSANA INTOUCH discuss his family’s yearly holiday light show displays.

 

PM360: How did your family first get involved in creating synchronized holiday light shows, and what inspired you to turn decorating into a full-scale hobby?
Dan Gandor: Ironically, I used to despise decorating for the holidays. Tangled strands of lights, half-working icicles, and plastic decorations that cracked…yet I always loved taking my family to drive-through light shows and seasonal displays around town.

One year, after watching The Great Christmas Light Fight on ABC, we visited a previous winner’s home. Seeing a synchronized pixel-light display in person was a completely different experience. The lights were incredible, but what struck me even more was seeing dozens of families lined up around the block sharing that experience together.

I’ve always enjoyed technology and creative problem-solving, and this hobby combined everything I love: computers, lighting, music, programming, networking, engineering, and design. I started with a single programmable candy cane as an “MVP” proof of concept. That one candy cane became three, then four snowflakes, then a 1,200-pixel mega tree. By the following Christmas, we had more than 10 props and over 2,000 lights.

Dan and his family getting ready to prep the house for their light show

Word spread quickly throughout our community, and then COVID accelerated everything. With families looking for safe outdoor activities, attendance exploded. Our Facebook following grew dramatically, some of our TikTok videos went viral, and we eventually gained more than 170,000 followers. Since then, we’ve continued adding new props, songs, and effects each year.

What goes into planning and programming a music-synced Halloween or Christmas display, and how long does the process usually take each year?
The show has expanded beyond Christmas into three separate seasonal experiences: a Halloween show in October, a Kids/Pop/Rock show in November, and our traditional Christmas display beginning after Thanksgiving. Most of my time now is spent creating and sequencing new songs. Sequencing is the process of programming every light, prop, and effect to synchronize with the music. It is equal parts technical challenge and artistic expression.

The light show in action during the holiday season

Do you have a favorite display, song, or moment from past seasons that stands out as especially memorable for your family?
My favorite moments aren’t necessarily tied to a specific song or prop; they’re the people. I still love that my kids, now 12 and almost 10, ask to sit and watch the show whenever we’re driving home at night rather than heading straight into the garage. We often walk outside and hand out candy canes to visitors. We’ve had buses arrive from assisted living communities, and seeing families, grandparents, and children enjoying the experience together is incredibly rewarding.

One moment, however, changed how I think about the entire hobby. I noticed a young boy standing close to the display for a long time…his mother explained that he had severe autism and that visiting our light show was one of the highlights of his year. She said he talked about it for months and that it brought him a sense of calm and joy. I gave him a handful of old burned-out pixels as a souvenir, and he was absolutely thrilled. Now we wait for him to arrive each year! That experience made me realize this wasn’t just a hobby or a technical challenge. It was an opportunity to create memories and bring people together. In the end, that’s what keeps us building and coming back every year.