History

HOW IT STARTED...

Richard Taylor started in 1988 with the idea of putting a stick tree with big lights in the front but ended up melting all of the wires in the lights.  The next year, he got the idea to put a string of lights on the 60 Holly bushes across the front of the property.  At that time the bushes were about 3 feet tall so it was relatively easy to decorate.  Today the Holly bushes are between 15 to 20 feet tall and hold 150,000 lights.  The next year we decided to decorate the gate so we put lights on the gate.  The following year we got the idea to put lights on the Dogwood trees behind the gate.  During the next year Cobb County put in a sidewalk across the front.  Richard added a 300 foot pipe to the east and a 200 foot pipe to the west and landscaped the area in the front that was originally a ditch.  We planted azaleas across the front and they became our next things to decorate.  After this, we got the bright idea to rent a lift and start putting lights in trees.  Initially we added one or two trees and over time this spread to 240 live trees.  The large elm tree on the west was quite a task and required us to rent an 85-foot boom lift and use poles to get the lights to the top.  We had for a long time what expert Christmas light people call a static light display, meaning that everything is on all of the time. 

HOW IT GREW...

In 2017, we added musical lights and lights that synchronize to the music. In 2018, we added 150,000 lights to the inside circle and musical lights on the house. The inner circle now has over 500,000 lights. We have added RGB arches and RGB pixel trees and a number of other electronic gizmos.

We added dozens of colored lanterns in the trees. We also added the Tunnel of Joy with over 100,000 lights - the most photographed spot in Georgia during the month of December!

All in all, this has been an accumulation of ideas and additions over the years that today brings our display to over 1.2 Million lights.