Tom Langley has decorated his home for the holidays for over 40 years. It was a tradition that his father started one Christmas and now Langley decorates the front yard of his home in Morallion Hills in Peachtree City on as many holidays as possible. Last Christmas, Langley, who has a background in engineering and electronics, decided to try light animation for his Christmas display. It was challenging, but ultimately successful. In order to get a little more practice and display his patriotism, Langley has created a six minute light animation display to celebrate the Fourth of July.

“Like bands jazz up their concerts with a light show, using light animation can jazz up a display,” said Langley.

While not as extravagant as his Christmas displays, the light animation at Langley’s home is still impressive. The animation is set to two songs, “Stars and Stripes Forever” and “Washington Post.” It takes Langley between 10 and 20 hours to program the 5,000 plus lights for one song and by the end of the process he knows the songs intimately.

“You know every beat of the song by the time it is done,” Langley said, describing the process as something like conducting an orchestra.

Langley, a resident of Peachtree City for 15 years, considers his holiday displays a hobby and it is clearly a labor of love. The neighborhood is used to his displays, so much so that when he took a year off from his Christmas displays people started asking if him if everything was all right.

His patriotic light display will run from 9-11 p.m. through the Fourth of July and he plans on running to 11:45 p.m. on July 4, so that people coming back from the fireworks can catch the show. He is also running the music on a small FM transmitter so that people can tune in to the music on 91.5 FM.

Langley is considering putting up a light animation for Halloween this year but the main focus will be Christmas which features 10 times as many lights.

Langley’s home is located aat 201 Felspar Ridge in Morallion Hills off Braelinn Rd.