His Christmas spirit is out of this world.
A Texas man routinely draws a crowd of onlookers to his home’s holiday light show spectacular — though half of the viewers expected to find aliens at their source.
Chris Hartgraves decked out his house with a massive Santa Claus, holiday music and, most importantly, 13,000 lights that stretch across the night sky and look eerily like UFOs hovering over Georgetown, a city 30 miles north of Austin.
“I started planning for it the day after Christmas last year,” Hartgraves told KXAN.
“Everybody knows I save up my vacation time, and they know my vacation once a year is to actually just set up the lights.”
Hartgraves house is illuminated every night in the months leading up to Christmas, but the light shows are reserved for the weekends.
From Friday to Sunday, the Christmas fanatic flashes the thousands of bulbs in coordination to the holiday music in 15-minute intervals for nearly three hours.
The routine also changes from week to week — after Hartgraves choreographs and plans the show on a digital replica of his home that he made on his computer software.
Hundreds have flocked to see the spectacle, which Hartgraves puts on for free, but countless have shown up after tracking down what they thought was an alien species.
“On the Facebook page people are wondering what are these things that I can see from, you know, H-E-B or down the street, and everybody’s commenting that it’s Chris again, doing his light show,” Hartgraves’ neighbor, Kay Hood, told the outlet.
Hartgraves never expected his elaborate shows to confuse his neighbors, but admitted he’s heard the rumors.
“People thought it was Elon Musk and his Starlink,” he said. “Some people said it was aliens coming down to land.”
The police were called to his house on at least one occasion this year.
Hartgraves had to verify that he wasn’t intentionally pointing his flashing concert lights at aircraft that were flying ahead.
“I invited them to stick around and watch the show, which they did, which was pretty cool,” Hartgraves said with a laugh.
Other than having plenty of knick-knacks scattered across the property just for kicks, Hartgraves also incorporated his own voice and those of his wife and two daughters to play as his light bulb animations dance.
His goal is to make plenty of memories for not only his own family, but for the other children in the neighborhood who can be seen dancing along with the music each night.
“And then go home with hopefully a little bit more Christmas spirit in the heart,” Hartgraves said.
