Tune in to a 'crazy' Christmas

COVENTRY, R.I. (FOX Providence) - Christmas started in August for a local culinary arts student who cooks up quite a sight that’s a feast for your holiday spirit and an opportunity to help someone in need.

“I started doing this seven years ago,” Tyler Horrocks of Coventry said, while tweaking the lights on his parent’s Coventry home.

The Blue Spruce Drive home glows with seemingly endless strings of colored and white twinklers.

“62,150 lights. I added 9 thousand more this year.”

He tells us the tradition almost ended until he decided to move back home from Florida where he worked at Disney World.

“This year was kind of a spur of the moment,” he said with a chuckle as we pointed out that stringing 62 thousand lights could hardly be described as ‘spur of the moment’. “I do it to make people smile.”

And they do smile by the car load. On a busy weekend night, as many as 100 cars drive by the home and tune to 107.5.

Horrocks hacked into an I-pod transmitter and wired a low powered radio station to a computer that makes the lights twinkle to the beat of about 100 tunes.

“An average song takes about two days to program,” Horrocks said, explaining why he starts to work on the Christmas scene in the summer.

A few years back, Tyler rolled out a bin for optional donations. In recent years, the money was sent to charitable organizations such as the Rhode Island Food Bank.

This year’s collection will help a family friend who was seriously injured in a car crash.

“We're raising money for them for their medical bills and for their household bills.”

His plans to build a brighter scene for next Christmas are already underway.

“I may do a Polar Express theme. Maybe next year, go a little higher. Get a cherry picker to put lights in the trees.”

He hopes to add as many as 10,000 lights for Christmas 2013. As far as this year, the lights will be on every day through New Years.