December is an important month for a lot of people. Just to name a few, this year, Buddhists celebrate Bodhi Day (Rohatsu) on December 8th. Hanukkah begins for Jewish people on December 18th. Our Wiccan/Neo Pagan friends celebrate Yule (Winter Solstice on December 22nd). Zoroastrians celebrate Zarathosht Diso (Death of Prophet Zarathushtra) on December 26th. And, of course, Christians celebrate Christmas on December 25th.

Many families drive around every holiday season and look at the Christmas decorations other families have put out. Some decorations are simple, while others, to borrow from National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, go as Griswold as humanly possible.

PC: Pacebook / FestiveLights

If you live in a decent-sized area, the local news outlets may post annual lists of the “best” decorated houses (or sometimes whole blocks) in the area. But if you’re visiting, besides it being more difficult to find these lists (you’d have to know what websites to look for), you also may have no idea of where each location is.

As a fan of “Griswold houses,” I was thrilled to find ChristmasPrism, which is an app that showed, in map form, houses that have registered their Christmas lights.

Developed by Michael Kane, the app allows users to view a map of all the houses in the U.S. decorated with Christmas lights. Users can post pictures of their own lights and see the lights of their friends and family, as well as strangers’ lights in any part of the country.

According to Distractify, Kane developed the app during the 2020 holiday season, when people were looking for holiday activities to do, but perhaps from the safety of their own cars. Even now, with Covid less of a threat, it’s, “a great way to rekindle some nostalgic holiday memories…or it could be the perfect moment to create some new memories and traditions with your loved ones.”

How it works

Once you’ve downloaded the app (there are versions for iPhone and Google Play) and made an account, you can search to see the lights in whatever state you’re in. Let’s use Florida as an example.

You can then zoom in on whatever area you’re in. Let’s say the greater Tampa-St. Pete section of the state:

The more check-ins and reviews a given house has, it will earn a different icon, starting from a reindeer and working its way up to a snowman, candy cane, Santa hat, etc. And you can keep zooming in so you know where, on the map, these places are:

If you’d like to include your holiday display in ChristmasPrism, you can do that, too; just click on the big “PLUS” prompt from any page:

…and fill in the required info:

• Photos of your house
• Title
• Description
• Custom URL (optional)
• Location (address)
• Acceptance of TOS

Once your application is approved, it’s included in the map.

The app has some other options such as being able to “check in” at any house and give reviews of the same. There’s also “Contest” (if there’s a contest in your area) option, as well as sponsorship opportunities.

Our thoughts – pros & cons

The app works well, although it did freeze up once (I have an iPhone 13 Pro with up-to-date software updates). I shut the app down and rebooted it and it’s worked fine ever since.

Overall, the app is self-explanatory and simple to use.

Unless I’m missing something, it looks as if houses may stay up in perpetuity. There’s no way to see if a family who went “all out” on their house in 2020 is still doing their thing. Don’t get me wrong – people who put that much time and effort into decorating their house usually plan on doing it for the long term. But…people get older. They move. They might even pass away. The well-loved house that did stuff for over 50 years eventually will stop (my parents used to take me to the Guarino-Seddio House in Brooklyn every year when I was a little girl. I went back in 2019 and I’m SO GLAD I did since the house went up for sale 2 years later).

Because the app is only as good as how many people have listed themselves on the app, there are lots of places where there are simply no houses listed. Case in point, I grew up on Staten Island, NY. Population 475,596 (in 2020). I know for a fact that there are plenty – and I mean PLENTY – of houses all decked out for the holidays. None are listed on the app.

So yeah, it has its good points and its not-so-good points. But if nothing else, ChristmasPrism might be a good addition to find some of the “good” houses, wherever you are.

Feature Image: Temu

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