For Darla D’Amato, lightening up means letting someone else climb a ladder to hang Christmas lights on her family's new 5,600 square-foot home in Katy, Texas. She paid $2,200 for a crew of people to hang Christmas lights and later take the lights down and store them until next Christmas. She said her new house is too tall for her husband to hang the lights, but having Christmas lights is a tradition in her family.

"Just thinking about getting all the Christmas stuff down every year just gives my husband a heart attack," said D'Amato, an executive at an investment firm. "It is much more time efficient for us to hire someone who knows what they’re doing."

Freeman said about 3 percent of his customers spend $10,000 or more per year to spruce up their lots - one customer paid $73,000 this year for mostly custom-built pieces to display.

An LED-animated scene of three elves putting a star on a tree costs $3,900 according to the Brite Ideas Web site. Santa on a motorcycle costs $1,950. Combining displays for neighborhood bragging rights can quickly run up the price tag.

After all, it's hard keeping up with new decorations, neighborhood aesthetics and an ever-increasing holiday spirit.

"It's definitely the high end market, where people want something new and unique and they're willing to pay for it," Freeman said. "They just want to stand out."

Home Depot doubled its floor space for holiday decorations this year and is stocking more than four times the holiday decor it had last year. Popular items include inflatable decor, including a 60-inch inflatable Santa on a motorcycle with a snowman in his sidecar that sells for $80, and a 96-inch inflatable carousel, which actually moves, for $170.

"Inflatables have been huge," said Home Depot spokeswoman Jean Osta Niemi. Also popular, Niemi said, is a plush toy rocking horse that can neigh and move its tail when turned on.

From square one, there was a problem. It took a while to sort things out because some of the pictures and descriptions were mismatched. What was supposed to be the Snowman and Penguin Snow Globe was actually the Polar Bear and Penguin, and the inflatable Santa Snow Globe had a picture of the Snowman and Penguin above it. As best as I can tell, you can get the Snowman and Penguin inflatable snow globe for $55.99 plus shipping. Again, the picture is confusing because the snowman is really a polar bear and the penguin is wearing a bright green dunce cap for some reason, but they're both pretty cute. The thing is 4-feet tall when it's blown up and the "durable polyester shell withstands season after season," which is a good thing, I suppose.

If you want to trade up, the inflatable Santa Snow Globe is $79.99 and is 4 1/2 -feet tall, which is an extra 6 inches. It has "Santa, a penguin and swirling snow," even though the picture shows a snowman and penguin due to the problem cited earlier. The penguin has a red Santa cap in this one though, which makes a lot more sense than a green dunce cap as far as I'm concerned. Stepping up from there, the inflatable Snowman Snow Globe is yours for $90.99 plus shipping. It's 6-feet tall and "features 2 snowmen, holiday tree and swirling snow."

When you're ready for inflatable heaven, you can go all the way and snag the air-blown, rotating Santa Carousel for $129.99 - the Queen Elizabeth II of Christmas decorations. It is a staggering 7-feet tall, with "4 traditional characters riding reindeer steeds. Sure to be the talk of the neighborhood." I'll bet it would. Sometimes that's a good thing, sometimes, not so much.

The comedy, starring Danny DeVito and Matthew Broderick as dueling neighbors, thrusts intelligent LED lighting into the national spotlight as DeVito's character attempts to turn his house into the world's biggest and most brilliant holiday display. His ambitions are realized when the entire house is transformed into a traffic-halting multimedia light show made possible by Color Kinetics' LED technology.

"This is a film that literally hinges on the lighting -- where the lights are a central character. Anything less than spectacular would have failed the story," said Jason McKinnon of Electric Aura Lighting Design, who conceptualized the ground-breaking lighting sequences along with Rob Sondergaard. "Based on their highly programmable and durable nature, we knew that LEDs were the only feasible choice to make our concept a reality. Color Kinetics' technology exceeded our expectations, allowing us to turn the house into a three-dimensional video display that is the movie's climatic centerpiece."

The project was achieved using Color Kinetics iColor Flex SL, which resembles a traditional holiday string light, but allows precise digital control of every node on the strand. Each thimble-sized node houses a tri-color LED that's capable of producing 64 billion colors through additive color-mixing of red, green and blue light -- much like a pixel in a video screen. Strands of iColor Flex SL lined the home's exterior from top to bottom -- comprising 14,300 nodes in all and essentially wrapping the home in a digital skin. Based on the vision of Deck the Halls director John Whitesell and production designer Bill Brzeski, holiday-themed light animations were designed and streamed via a media server to the LED nodes, which projected the content back.

At full intensity, the 14,300 LED nodes drew just 7,150 watts of energy -- the equivalent of four average hairdryers.

By comparison, wrapping the house in the same fashion with conventional exterior string lights would have drawn approximately 100,100 watts -- 14 times more than the LED installation -- yet without the capability for programmable effects.

The electrical current draw of the entire LED installation was 126 amps -- which is the approximate draw of 1.3 average households.

By comparison, the same configuration using conventional exterior string lights would have drawn 812 amps -- approximately 6.5 times more than the LED installation, or the equivalent of 8 houses' worth of power.

Each tri-color node of iColor Flex SL incorporates a microchip that was custom-designed by Color Kinetics, making it an individually programmable "pixel."

Filming was interrupted numerous times by small aircraft that were attracted to the set by the lights.

"This year we really like the globes. They're a really popular item," said shopper Brenda Way.

Snow globes certainly are a popular item. The globe, which lights up and displays a continuous snowstorm within, recently sold out at both Lowe's and Home Depot in Rome.

"They came in maybe two weeks before Thanksgiving, and they were gone before Thanksgiving," said Brent Scott, a Rome Home Depot associate.

"Pretty much every person walking in the store had to stop and stare at that thing I know I always did walking past it, you know I think little kids looked like they wanted to live inside that thing," said Mike Stiadle, Rome Lowe's store nanager.

Customers all around the country, including an enthusiastic Lee County contingency, are snapping up the $199 8-foot blow-up snow globes. They contain more than 1.5 million white pellets that swirl around like snow. The "snow" in the globe looks especially real when it's blowing around Santa Claus, a snowman and a Christmas tree. The globes take about four minutes to inflate.

Made by Gemmy Industries, the globes also come in smaller sizes, but the large varieties are the most popular.

"We are already sold out," said Joe Dinnegan, sales specialist at Lowe's Home Improvement Warehouse in Cape Coral. "I don't think we're going to get any more."

"These lights are extremely popular with our customers. They have a five-year warranty and can be used indoors and outside and they are just amazing. You can't go wrong because they use so much less power," said Michelle Novak, manager of the South End's Canadian Tire.

Seasonal manager Jack Levesque said the LED lights are popular with electricians.

"Our electrician was in to our Canadian Tire store hooking up our Christmas trees. We were having trouble blowing breakers with the extra load from all of our tree lights. He said if all our display trees used LEDs, we wouldn't notice how much power was being drawn," said Levesque.

He says that soon all Christmas lights will be LEDs.

Ace Hardware now carries the lights in pine cone and teardrop shapes "that look more like the traditional lights," Evans said.

Target carries LEDs in a variety of colors and styles, including traditional-looking strands, snowmen, snowflakes, candy canes, holly berries and even red chili peppers.

While a few customers are buying, not everyone is sold. But once people learn about the technology, retailers expect the lights to catch on. Big time.

"Every year, more and more people are asking about them," Evans said. "It's one of those things we think will catch on sooner rather than later."

Good Grief. Learn the true meaning of Christmas with Charlie Brown's classic pathetic Christmas tree. Leave it bare or dress it up all fancy. The tree is an exact replica of the tree from the famous cartoon, made of wire branches and plastic needles with a criss cross wooden base. The bendable branches allow you to make it look just how you want, super pathetic or just kind of pathetic. The tree comes with one red Christmas ball ornament. Plus the bendable branches make it possible to fold the tree entirely flat for easy storage during the non-yuletide times of the year.

* Wire/plastic/wood base
* Base: 91/2"l, 27/8"w; Tree: 21"h; glass ball: 3"w
* Take care with rough wood base, as it tends to splinter