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In one South Florida community, a man's holiday decorations are causing holiday fear for local children instead of creating holiday cheer. Residents called police and complained to the city that a house in Miami Beach had a life-sized, blindfolded Santa Claus doll hanging from a tree with its hands tied. Some residents were furious and said their naughty neighbor put jolly old St. Nick in a position that is not too merry. But even police officers couldn't save a Santa who was bound, gagged and hanging for the holidays. The owner of the house said it's freedom of speech. But...

The wife, myself and my 2 ½ year old daughter were in Florida for a week…..after scouting the C-USA and ACC football championship games we spent three days in Disney World for “Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party” and from a Christian point of view I must tell you how pleasantly surprised I was. At all three parks we visited Magic Kingdom-MGM-Epcot, Christmas carols blared from the speaker- and many of them were religious hymns most of us will sing in church on Christmas Eve or the day itself…”Hark the Harrell Angels”, “What Child is this?” and many more were heard...

DEERFIELD TWP. — Sheriff's deputies asked the owner who lit up his house with 25,000 Christmas lights synched to music to turn off the display after a traffic accident Tuesday night. Deerfield Twp. resident Carson Williams agreed to shut down his holiday decorations indefinitely. Williams told a Cincinnati television station that sheriff's deputies could not reach the traffic accident because of the traffic lined up in his neighborhood. The display caught attention across the nation on network TV and on the Internet because the lights on the Williams house and filling their yard are synchronized by computer with music broadcast...

MASON, Ohio (AP) - Some people at Christmas time are content to deck their homes with evergreen wreaths and holly, and maybe a few strings of lights made to look like glimmering icicles. Not Carson Williams. He spends nearly two months hooking up 25,000 lights, then programs them to dance to Christmas music. Hundreds of cars drive by his house north of Cincinnati every night to see the display, which also is posted on several Internet sites. "So far, everyone's been really courteous," Williams said on NBC's "Today" show Monday. "I told the neighbors, I told the sheriff, if they...

A video clip shows home Christmas lights synchronized to flash in time to a musical score, in this case Trans-Siberian Orchestra's "Wizard in Winter" (from The Lost Christmas Eve album). I'm lousy at pasting web links, but it's worth your time to see what this guy has done to his house for the holidays. Essentially, some guy named Carson Williams, of Mason, Ohio, put together a little 'festival of lights', and using a combination of light controllers and a low-power radio station, choreographed the whole shebang to the score of Trans-Siberian Orchestra's 'Wizard In Winter'. The video is available...

METAIRIE, La. (AP) — The outcry was so intense after a suburban mall removed a Christmas display of a miniature hurricane-ravaged town that the exhibit is going back up. Frank Evans, who designed the tiny blue-tarped roofs and little toppled fences, said he will have them reinstalled for the weekend at the mall's request. Some of the satire will be toned down a bit. Evans said mall management didn't want doorways marked with big orange X's indicating the building was searched for bodies, and Evans readily agreed. "I didn't want to hurt anybody's feelings," Evans said. Evans said the removal...

And More on Funeral Masses, and Confessions ROME, NOV. 29, 2005 (Zenit.org).- Answered by Father Edward McNamara, professor of liturgy at the Regina Apostolorum Pontifical University. Q: What would you consider an appropriate time during Advent to put up Christmas trees, ornaments, lights and other decorations in churches and Christian homes? -- B.O., Lewistown, Pennsylvania A: This question is simple only in appearance because customs surrounding the celebration of Christmas vary widely among different cultures. From a strictly liturgical standpoint the preparations for receiving the Christ Child intensify from Dec. 17 onward and this is probably a good time to...

METAIRIE -- Frank Evans thought the tiny blue-tarped roofs, little toppled fences and miniature piles of hurricane debris he included in the Christmas display he builds every year for a suburban New Orleans shopping mall struck just the right humorous tone. Chuck Burton / Associated Press Lakeside Mall management told Frank Evans to dismantle a Katrina-themed Christmas display. Mall management decided otherwise and told Evans, a landscape architect from nearby Gretna, to dismantle it. "Although most people did enjoy the decorations, a few customers found the display to be in poor taste," said a statement issued Tuesday night by Lakeside...

A Louisiana shopping mall is featuring an unusual train exhibit, The Pelican Has learned. The above picture depicts the St. Bernard parish pump station, derisively referred to here as "Broussard Pump Station," named after the parish president Aaron Broussard. We are told that the photo is indeed authentic. As indicated by press reports, parish president Aaron Broussard took quite some flak for evacuating the station. Some people felt that if the stations had not been evacuated soon, there would not have been so much destruction... The mall display in the photo above seems to indirectly poke fun at Broussard.

METAIRIE, La. -- Frank Evans thought the tiny blue-tarped roofs, little toppled fences and miniature piles of hurricane debris he included in the Christmas display he builds every year for a suburban New Orleans shopping mall struck just the right humorous tone. Mall management decided otherwise and told Evans, a landscape architect from nearby Gretna, to dismantle it. "Although most people did enjoy the decorations, a few customers found the display to be in poor taste," said a statement issued Tuesday night by Lakeside Shopping Center in Metairie. Evans videotaped the display before dismantling it. The creation had sat since...

Check out this guy's Christmas lights: http://jamphat.com/xmas.wmv Then be glad you don't live across the street from him!

I stumbled upon this while I was surfing and it was just too insoiring not to share. I have had some good conversaions with some folks here and I thought this was a bit of christmas cheer. Dont know the guy who did this but I was struck with awe that someone COULD do this..... Its a wav file about 4 megs big..... and its simply amazing... I hope I dont get in trouble for posting this http://members.cox.net/transam57/lights.wmv

Apparently the talents of home decoration diva Martha Stewart don't translate all that well behind bars, with reports surfacing this week that she lost a Christmas decorating contest to one of her fellow inmates at the Alderson, West Virginia correctional facility. "The shocking story came out this afternoon," reported MSNBC's Chris Jansen last night. "No word yet on who took the title from the high doyen of household hints and no word on how she is handling this surprise upset." Despite her disappointing showing, a former inmate at the jail tells MSNBC that Stewart is at least surrounded by friends...

[What] prompted Fidel Castro to order the Christmas decorations dismantled... was the light display forming the number 75. That's how many political dissidents Castro rounded up in March 2003 and threw into Cuban jails. At their trials, these librarians, journalists and peaceful political activists received sentences of up to 28 years. Now a loosely connected international movement of librarians is refusing to forget their Cuban colleagues. One inspiring example comes from the town of Vermillion, South Dakota, whose public library is sponsoring the independent -- that is, not government-run -- Dulce Maria Loynaz Library in Havana. The Loynaz Library was...

Father Christmas’s grotto is not an icy cave in Lapland but the economic heart of southern China, where almost two-thirds of the world’s Christmas trees and decorations are made. In factories staffed by predominantly Buddhist workers who have scarcely any idea of the meaning of Christmas, the baubles, Santas, lights and tinsel that mark the West’s biggest festival are churned out at a relentless pace. “No one would dispute it if you said China is the biggest manufacturer of Christmas products. Even its Customs department has figures just for exports of these goods,” said Paul French, publishing and marketing director...

SHENZHEN - Father Christmas's grotto is not an icy cave in Lapland but the economic heart of southern China, where almost two-thirds of the world's Christmas trees and decorations are made. In factories staffed by predominantly Buddhist workers who have scarcely any idea of the meaning of Christmas, the baubles, Santas, lights and tinsel that mark the West's biggest festival are churned out at a relentless pace. "No one would dispute it if you said China is the biggest manufacturer of Christmas products. Even its Customs department has figures just for exports of these goods," said Paul French, publishing and...

We're getting reports that all of Laura Bush's lovely Christmas decorations may have bumped some of the White House's usual art out of the building. Like the official portrait of Bill Clinton. A Wonkette operative writes: A friend of mine just got the chance to get a White House tour, and she really wanted to see President Clinton's portrait close up. She couldn't find it, and an usher quietly told her that it had been taken down to make room for Christmas decorations. But there was Bush 41 and Reagan still on the wall. We understand keeping Reagan up there...

Cuba Warns U.S. Diplomatic Mission to Take Down Christmas Decorations or Face Consequences, American Diplomat Says By Vanessa Arrington Associated Press Writer HAVANA (AP) - The Cuban government has warned the U.S. diplomatic mission in Havana to immediately take down Christmas decorations outside its offices or face unspecified consequences, the top American diplomat on the island said Tuesday. The trimmings of Santa Claus, candy canes and white lights wrapped in palm trees on the mission's seaside lawn don't appear to be the problem. What was likely irking the Cuban authorities, U.S. Interest Section Chief James Cason said, is a lighted...

HAVANA - U.S. diplomats on Wednesday ignored a warning from the Cuban government to immediately take down Christmas decorations outside its offices or face unspecified consequences. The trimmings of Santa Claus, candy canes and white lights wrapped in palm trees still stood on the mission's seaside lawn a day after the warning. The element that irked the Cuban authorities most was a sign among the decorations that reads "75" — a reference to 75 Cuban dissidents jailed last year, according to U.S. Interest Section Chief James Cason. A reporter who drove past the interest section Wednesday saw the sign and...