MACON, Ga. — If you’re still in the mood to soak up a little holiday joy, the folks at Mercer Village say to come on down. The lights will be up for just a few more days, but we wanted to know who makes it all possible.
52,000 lights are synchronized to your favorite Christmas music and displayed in a beautiful show thanks to middle and high school students, along with some college students in the Macon area.
In December, they competed in teams at the Macon annual Light More Homes programming contest. Stratford Academy took home the grand prize with nearly a dozen of their students placing in the competition.
It wasn’t just those in the competition that got to help make the magic happen. Sixth grader and aspiring engineer, Caleb Varnadore, has some big plans.
“[To] work at Apple, I suppose,” he said. He’s known as an IT guru among the staff at Stratford.
“The staff put in a request for it, I would get there, and they’d say, ‘Caleb’s already fixed it,” said Stratford IT director, Bud Hall.
Caleb wanted to go beyond helping staff at Stratford, but he’s a little too young for this year’s competition.
“I just thought it would be neat to code all these lights. I’ve just always looked at them and was wondering how they worked,” he said.
So, when Hall heard Caleb wanted to learn how to turn the lights into a winter wonderland, he made a few calls, including to engineer Chuck Hammock who helps put on the show.
In about five days, Caleb programmed his own show synchronized to Mariah Carey’s #1 hit ‘All I Want for Christmas Is You’ using a software called Lightorama.
“Each column is a time, each row is a different light, so it’s a very big spreadsheet. I just put different effects in the spreadsheet to put this together. I’m just so grateful to code a song,” he said.
You can enjoy the lightshow at Mercer Village until mid-January from 5-10 p.m. Remember to tune your radio to 92.7 FM so you can listen to the music as you watch the lights.
This year, the lights extend down Stadium Drive with a new Candy Cane Lane.