Getting in the holiday spirit

Observing Christmas 2010 is turning out to be like other years. It takes me a while to warm up to the holiday spirit, but I’m fully on board shortly before the big day. While I’m not a fan of starting the season earlier and earlier (especially when Christmas displays start popping up after the Fourth of July), I should probably get in gear sooner.
Case in point — it’s three days before Christmas and I haven’t finished my Christmas cards. Haven’t even started actually. I’ve kicked around some ideas and settled on a concept, but the execution part is still very, very shaky.
One thing I took care of reasonably ahead of time was my holiday lights. For the first time in years, I put up lights around the ol’ homestead.
I could only spring for one string of lights, given the tight budget we all seem to be operating under these days. However, I wanted to make the display special a la our annual Tour of Lights.
Looking to spice things up a bit, I decided to set my light display to music … or something like it. The one downside? The lights don’t blink so there was no way for them to turn on and off to the dulcet tones of “The Nutcracker” or the Trans-Siberian Orchestra or The Yule Logs.
Thankfully, I came up with a solution. It was a particularly timely one, considering that it tied in one of the hottest music instruments of 2010.
Here’s a sample: Merry Christmas!