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Christmas tour ban http://community.emeraldcoast.com/onset?id=14246&template=article.html March 19, 2007 - 9:50AM City Manager Lannie Corbin did the right thing when he told the Christmas Lady to stop giving tours of her home, City Council members said earlier this week. Debbie Lewis, aka the Christmas Lady, has been decorating her home and giving tours for the past five years. More than 5,000 people visited her home on Duncan Drive during the Christmas season last year, Corbin said. Neighbors complained about traffic and congestion, he said. Meetings and talk of moving the Christmas display to somewhere out of a residential area did not get...

CAMBRIDGE, Ill. - A teenager is being hailed as a hero for saving his aunt from a fire at their house, but he lost his own life when he went back into the burning building to search for the family's two cats, authorities say. Seth A. DeShane, 14, was pronounced dead late Thursday at the family home, which was destroyed in the fire. "He really saved his aunt," said the Rev. Kris Dietzen, pastor at Cambridge Lutheran Church. "He woke his aunt up and told her the Christmas tree was on fire. "He got her out of the house. She...

Anybody got an extension cord. Time to plug in the Moose.

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...

Christmas Lights in Ninth WardVolunteers working with the Common Grounds Collective,a non-profit community service and relief organization based in New Orleans,gather under generator-powered Christmas lightsstrung at the corner of North Robertson and Louisa in the Ninth Ward. Michael DeMocker / Times-Picayune

A TEXAS man was arrested overnight after calling police to complain about the theft of his marijuana, authorities said. Stephen Knight, 17, said three men had broken into his apartment, hogtied him with Christmas lights and stole some marijuana, along with a plasma screen television, police said. Police are looking for the suspects. In the meantime, they arrested Knight after finding several marijuana plants growing under heat lamps in the apartment, four grams of harvested marijuana and a tablet of ecstasy, Officer Chad Ripley said. Knight said the men barged into his home early this morning demanding, "Where's the weed?",...

DENVER -- A Lafayette, Colo., man who claimed his Christmas lights could be controlled by Web visitors from all over the world admitted Monday that it was all a big hoax. Alek Komarnitsky claimed that his 17,000 Christmas lights on his home were connected to his computer through a well-known computer device controller and said that he had written computer code that allowed Internet visitors to activate the various zones of the lights around his home when they visited his Web site.

Written 12/15/2004 Updated 12/16/04 Updated 12/19/04 Updated 12/22/04 With all the legislative attack on Christianity this season headed by liberal groups such as the ACLU (liberal anti-Christ union), many private Christian citizens around America are retaliating by putting simplistic to extraordinary effort in the Christmas decorations they are displaying in their front yards. If liberals are serious about their intention to secularize the entire nation, they're eventually gonna have to come out to Parker, Colorado from where these pictures have been taken. Christmas is about Jesus Christ, no matter how it has been argued. Download Oh Holy NightMP3 (organ instrumental)...

Written 12/15/2004 Updated 12/16/04 Updated 12/19/04 Updated 12/22/04 With all the legislative attack on Christianity this season headed by liberal groups such as the ACLU (liberal anti-Christ union), many private Christian citizens around America are retaliating by putting simplistic to extraordinary effort in the Christmas decorations they are displaying in their front yards. If liberals are serious about their intention to secularize the entire nation, they're eventually gonna have to come out to Parker, Colorado from where these pictures have been taken. Christmas is about Jesus Christ, no matter how it has been argued. Download Oh Holy NightMP3 (organ instrumental)...

PORTSMOUTH - It takes at least "a few days" for Christine Schule to adorn her Wamesit Place apartment with what she characterizes as some much-needed Christmas cheer.That cheer comes in the form of not only presents, but also ample Christmas lights on outside windows on the first and second floors. This year, she has lighted decorations of a snowflake, a candy cane and an angel, not to mention the wired wreath hanging outside her front door.The electric ornaments are a staple for some residents of the public housing complex managed by the Portsmouth Housing Authority. There have even been some...

Written 12/15/2004 Updated 12/16/04 Updated 12/19/04 With all the legislative attack on Christianity this season headed by liberal groups such as the ACLU (liberal anti-Christ union), many private Christian citizens around America are retaliating by putting simplistic to extraordinary effort in the Christmas decorations they are displaying in their front yards. If liberals are serious about their intention to secularize the entire nation, they're eventually gonna have to come out to Parker, Colorado from where these pictures have been taken. Christmas is about Jesus Christ, no matter how it has been argued. Download Oh Holy NightMP3 (organ instrumental) and listen...

We've discussed Jimmy Carter's legacy of friendship and warm support for the world's dictators many times already, notably on Venezuela, but a return to Carter's Cuba legacy may be an even worse experience, because of an unmistakable whiff of treason. Where do we start? Remember Jimmy Carter's cabinet appointments? People like Andrew Young, who hung out with the hate-America crowd over at the United Nations and denounced America and Israel with the gamiest dictators on earth? Carter had a lot of these rabid blame-America-firsters on his coattails, and some are more active than ever. One is named Wayne Smith, who...

Each year, many families participate in a holiday tradition of creating dazzling Christmas light displays on their houses. Larry Hamilton has one you don't want to miss. This year, standing with one giant boot on the garage and one boot on the edge of the paved street below, a 48-foot-tall replica of a U.S. soldier stands guard over Hamilton's Tower Park Marina home -- a tribute to the soldiers. The father and son team of Tony, left, and Larry Hamilton, proudly stand in front of a 48-foot-tall lighted soldier replica moments after it was completed. The Hamiltons, along with the...

Cuban strongman Fidel Castro is cracking down on the latest enemy of the revolution: Christmas lights. The dictatorship has threatened the American interest section in Havana with "serious consequences" if it does not remove a Christmas light display around the perimeter of its headquarters. In a country where the display of Christmas lights is strongly discouraged by the communist government - public displays of lights in the capital are virtually nonexistent - the golden lights festooning the base of the interest section have inflamed the Castro regime. Government officials "said on two occasions if we didn't take down the objects,...

With all the legislative attack on Christianity this season headed by liberal groups such as the ACLU (liberal anti-Christ union), many private Christian citizens around America are retaliating by putting simplistic to extraordinary effort in the Christmas decorations they are displaying in their front yards. If liberals are serious about their intention to secularize the entire nation, they're eventually gonna have to come out to Parker, Colorado from where these pictures have been taken. Christmas is about Jesus Christ, no matter how it has been argued. "Download "Oh Holy Night" MP3." Organizations like the ACLU are seeing to it that...

A couple things stand out about the U.S.'s assessment of Cuba these days. Number one, the U.S. diplomats in Havana have started openly stating that Castro is on his last legs. We don't usually see this kind of bluntness from these guys. What does it mean? Is there a new Cuba diplomatic offensive coming up? Forget that, we've had those, to little effect. It can only mean that he really is. Diplomats are predictable creatures, but they don't like to get surprised by events. These statements are for us, not Castro, and I think they're just telling us they're on...

GENEVA, Ill. - Greg Parcell isn't thinking about the 50,000 lights all around him, or the computer that has them blinking to the beat of "Let it Snow" on the radio. Instead, his mind is on what's missing as he stands in what seems the one empty spot in his front yard. "I still have to put up the penguins around the campfire," he says. Parcell, 47, is a toy soldier in a growing army of Christmas enthusiasts becoming more sophisticated at turning yards into blazing monuments to the holidays. New companies are cropping up with elaborate, automated decorations and...

Paul Sakuma/Associated Press Alan Aerts of Monte Sereno, Calif., once put up elaborate Christmas displays that drew thousands of visitors. Now he has only a singing Grinch that points to neighbors who complained about the traffic. MONTE SERENO, Calif., Nov. 26 (AP) - For six years, Alan and Bonnie Aerts transformed their Silicon Valley home into a Christmas wonderland, complete with a surfing Santa, jumbo candy canes and a carol-singing chorus of mannequins. Visitors loved it. Last year, after NBC's "Weekend Today" featured the $150,000 display of custom-designed props, more than 1,500 cars prowled the Aertses' cul-de-sac in this...

MONTE SERENO, Calif. (AP) - For six years, Alan and Bonnie Aerts transformed their Silicon Valley home into a Christmas cornucopia - complete with surfing Santa, nativity scene, giant candy canes flanking the driveway and a carol-singing chorus of life-sized mannequins. The popular display attracted thousands of visitors, coming from as far as San Francisco and Sacramento, to Monte Sereno, an upscale suburb just west of San Jose. After the exhibit was featured on NBC's "Weekend Today" last year, more than 1,500 cars prowled the cul-de-sac each night. But this year, the merry menagerie - worth about $150,000 in custom-designed...