GILROY
– Mike Osler’s neighbors sure are an understanding group.
GILROY – Mike Osler’s neighbors sure are an understanding group.
While many people might call the police for all the bright flashing lights and the traffic he creates on an otherwise quiet cul-de-sac on Lexington Place, Osler’s neighbors have embraced all the attention his unique holiday display receives.
“They love it,” he said. “They all support it. My neighbors move their cars off the street so people can get in here.”
Each night at about 6 p.m., Osler’s home at 731 Lexington turns into the stage of an animated light display set to music that visitors can listen to right from their car stereo on 89.5 FM.
For nearly 15 minutes, visitors put their cars in park and watch Santa Claus and eight reindeer dance atop Osler’s roof while bells ring and his homemade characters match eye candy to the music playing through the stereo.
The program, including a clip from the movie “Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer” along with holiday songs “Jingle, Jingle,” “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” “Carol of the Bells,” “Little Saint Nick,” “I Love These Bells” and “Holly Jolly,” are the product of nearly a decade of turning Osler’s hobby into one of the most memorable holiday displays one will ever encounter.
The display all began with his wife’s Christmas spirit.
“I wasn’t into Christmas at all, but she was big time,” Osler remembered about his wife, who had a particular interest in sleighs.
At the time, Osler had transferred from the Bay Area to Georgia for work, and he was looking for an interesting gift for his wife for Christmas. What he found was a large sleigh that was a part of a store’s Christmas display for several years. Little did he know that one piece would be the start of something so big.
The now split-up couple moved back to Gilroy about eight years ago, and heard about the holiday lights competition and decided to put up a display.
“We put all these animals out, and we won third place,” he said. “I told my wife that would never happen again.”
Sure enough, with his setup increasing in size each year, Osler’s front yard took home first-place honors the next five years, but it wasn’t until the fifth year that the house began taking on a life of its own and generating his own Christmas spirit.
The ham radio enthusiast, who had been toying with radio technology since he was 12 years old, had an idea of using the cutouts to make a moving light display. Unfortunately, what he was trying to do had never been done before, so even finding a way to make it work would become a huge challenge.
“I searched for three months for the right circuit diagram,” the Covad account manager said about the beginnings of his plan that began five years ago. “Then I found a guy out of Kansas that was doing exactly what I was looking for. You could create this musical program and you could make it time when the lights would come on.”
The program, called Dasher, looks like a spreadsheet on a computer screen. Across the top are times, and down the side are the names of the different lights. By clicking on the intersecting block of a time and light socket, Osler can control when the lights turn on and off.
“I got the connector to work, and then I thought, ‘What am I going to do with it?,'” he said. “And ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’ just stuck.”
From Osler’s computer, there a 48-plug socket connector to which all of the light strands connect. When the program is told to make a certain string of lights turn on, it simply opens up the electric connection to that plug. By doing it thousands of times to turn on and off note-for-note with the music, Osler had something remarkable.
“A lot of people have (the program), but no one does what I did with it,” said Osler, who sent a video of his program to Dasher’s program creator, Drew Hickman. “Even he was amazed at what I did with it.”
Amazingly, because the lights are not on continuously, Osler’s lights and computer can run off of a single outlet and pulls very little power.
“From an electrical standpoint, it only costs me $30 extra every year,” he said.
Next, Osler had to make his lawn ornaments match the songs. He was limited because his self-described lack of artistic ability but made all the cutouts by hand anyway by using a grid system he derived from methods drafters use to recreate images. He found that if he could find an image on the Internet, even if it was just a few inches tall, he could recreate it to life-size.
By the end of the year, he had his first display, including the figures for ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas,’ and bells that appear to ring by running power off and on to different strings of lights.
Five years later, Osler still is making changes and improving his display. Last year, Santa Claus and the reindeer made their way to the roof and appear to run, and this year he added the Beach Boys song, ‘Little Saint Nick’ and the audio from the Rudolph television special.
However, each change to the program means completely reprogramming his light sequences. It took three weekends to re-design Santa Claus to stand during the new additions – it now has between 3,000 and 4,000 lights – and another five hours to program it using Dasher.
“It’s only one minute and 40 seconds, but it cost me a lot of time,” he said.
But the hard work has paid off, and with the reputation his display has built over the years, Osler already is seeing the cars back up down the street again.
“Normally, the first week it’s dead, but I’ve had a lot of visitors already,” he said.
Osler usually spends a couple of hours a night outside meeting visitors, who often feel the urge to come out of their cars and thank him.
“I had one woman tell me I restored her faith in Christmas,” Osler laughed. “I’ll keep doing it as long as people appreciate it. Nothing beats the charge you get the first time you fire it up.”
