The most insane Christmas decoration I've ever designed was for a corporate holiday event in Los Angeles last year. The client requested "subtle," and we ended up with a 12-foot-tall inflatable Santa waving his goodbyes from the roof of a Sprinter limo, complete with synchronized LED lights and machines blowing artificial snow at the valet entrance. Guests were posing for selfies before they caught their breath - they'd dubbed it the unofficial photo backdrop of the evening. I do things a little tamer at home, but my kids talked me into putting up the life-size Grinch hanging off our balcony like he's stealing the lights. Cars pull over every evening, and neighbors are still talking about it months later. The more circus-like the ornament, the sooner it draws a crowd - no one strolls by a colossal holiday display without grinning or pointing or pulling out a cellphone.
The craziest, wackiest Christmas decoration I ever got was a dancing moose that wouldn't stop singing—and I mean would not stop. It wore a tiny scarf, shook its antlers like it was auditioning for a music video, and belted out "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer" every time someone so much as walked past it. At first, I thought it was hilarious. Then it started going off in the middle of the night... triggered by absolutely nothing. I'd be half-asleep and suddenly hear this cheerful moose yelling holiday chaos from the living room. But here's the thing: as ridiculous as it is, I still put it out every year. Somewhere along the way, that unhinged little moose became part of the tradition.
A unique Christmas decor idea I did a while ago was what I called the "AI Santa Command Center." It was a big class project that took over my front yard and eventually became a scene that my neighbors talked about every Christmas. This decoy was a large Santa that was about 12 feet tall and was outfitted with all sorts of tech Santa goodies, like a smart AI that spoke and held conversations with folks that walked by. I coordinated with some of my owners so that Santa could recognize the folks in our neighborhood, so that he would remember their names and greet and even have conversations with the kids about their Christmas wishes. This Christmas, I spoke to my neighbors about more than the kids. My Giant Santa was accompanied by a 20-foot animated arch Christmas light tunnel that performed a Christmas scan with the AI that told each participant their Christmas fate. It was a Christmas light show that my neighbors absolutely loved and even made a TikTok about it that we'll never forget. Shortly before the event, I programmed the whole show to a custom soundtrack whose tempo would change depending on the number of attendees, garnering four channels of the show with DMX for maximum control. It was a wacky and ridiculous event, no doubt, but it turned out to be absolutely magical in a way that holiday chaos and creativity intertwined together. While my neighbors still say I turned Christmas into a live beta test, I would say it was more than worth the late-night wiring. Bringing that kind of joy and confusion to a street full of families made it all worth it.