WARNER ROBINS, Ga. — Four years ago during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Brad Niebrand wanted to do something cool for his birthday.
"We went up to Sonic, decorated up a few Jeeps, and went out just riding around looking at Christmas lights," he recalled.
After the cars roll out, you realize the Warner Robins Jeep Club president is downplaying a bit what is going on.
"Last year we had forty Jeeps in our procession," he calculated.
Jeeps decked the hoods with lights, whirly things and themes.
"You use a lot of zip ties, a little bit of duct tape," Brad described.
Daniel Jones is also a member, and says you've got to watch out not to over power your Jeep.
"Mine's Darth Vader, so what's Darth Vader? It's the lightsaber, so everything on the Jeep has got to be red," he said proudly.
Daniel says now it's a ritual for the folks that see the rolling festivities and for the lighting engineers.
"It's been a family project ongoing for several years, and now the neighborhood light ride is a family tradition and part of a Christmas thing we look forward to," he said with a smile.
As you can imagine, a lot of folks are like, "Come to my neighborhood," but this is a fun thing for the Jeep Club, so they go to the neighborhoods to recruit them and say, 'Hey, come here -- we've got amazing lights for you to see."
"We help Toys for Tots, we help the sheriff's coat drive," Daniel said, "So it's just a chance for us to let our hair down, light up the Jeeps, see who has the coolest lights in town, just have a little fun and enjoy time with our families."
It's a win-win situation with plenty of twinkling joy to go around.
"Something as little as riding around in a Jeep with lights on it brings joy to people, and at this time of year with everything going on in the world, the more we can do, the better off we are," Brad said with a smile.