Rebecca Olson - ISU Writing

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The Stretch of Holiday Decorations

Rebecca Olson

Rebecca Olson’s article examines how holiday decorations are a genre and how that genre can affect people. By using an understanding of Illinois State University’s (ISU’s) version of cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) and trajectory to analyze this genre, the creation of holiday decorations can be viewed as a literate activity where the decorations take on a life of their own. To find out how holiday decorations can come to life, read on.

Boo! Each night in October at dusk, a ghost named Stretch would arise in my front yard, and he would dissolve into the ground at midnight. Stretch was actually an air-blown, pre-lit inflatable that I controlled by remote. One year, two trick-or-treaters, a boy about three years old and a girl about a year old, were especially fascinated by my decorations when they stopped by. Their mom explained that they were my neighbors across the street and that her kids loved my decorations very much. In fact, they loved the ghost so much that they refused to go to bed unless they looked out the window and said goodnight to the ghost. One night, the ghost wasn’t there. Well, he was, but he was still on the ground—I had been working late, and by the time I had arrived home, I had forgotten to push the button on Stretch’s remote. The mom told me her kids were upset that the ghost wasn’t there, but she told them he had gone to bed earlier than them so that they had better get to sleep too! They were OK then and went to sleep. You can bet that I made sure I never forgot again. During trick-or-treating, these two children would take turns and gently hug the ghost and tell him goodnight one more time because they knew he would be gone again until the next October. When I picked out my decorations, I never dreamed it would have such an effect

20 Grassroots Writing Research Journal

on someone. Since moving, I feel like I’m letting those kids down, almost as if I’d told Linus that the Great Pumpkin wasn’t coming (It’s the Great Pumpkin).

The Writing Program Lens

Before entering the Writing Program at Illinois State University (ISU), I had always thought of the term genre in regards to types of music or types of books. The idea of genre is much bigger though. Genre is a type of textual production that has

recognizable features and standard conventions that are included in the piece. My original definition of genre was based on my antecedent knowledge, which is basically the knowledge that I already possess on a topic before encountering and reacting to a new situation or new knowledge. With my newfound definition, I realized that holiday decorations are a genre.

Let’s look a little further into the genre itself. What makes holiday decorations a genre? What are some conventions of this genre? In other words, what must a holiday decoration have to be considered a holiday decoration? Genre conventions, or in other words, the standard features of a genre, for holiday decorations would include that they obviously need to have something to do with a holiday. They typically celebrate or symbolize some type of tradition for a holiday. The holiday itself can be broad. It can be a national holiday or a religious holiday or a secular holiday. Returning to specific conventions, the holiday decorations need to be something of a decorative nature. They must adorn a space or something that already exists. They are multimodal pieces. In other words, the pieces typically encompass more than one mode—they create a message without just relying on printed text. They can often consist of pictures and text to be both seen and heard. Speaking of multimodal holiday decorations, I know a great example of one.

Literate Activity Time!

That great example involves my friend whose holiday decorations seem to have a life of their own. Holiday decorations can impact people. I know—it sounds crazy to think of holiday decorations making a

Figure 1: Meet Stretch.

Throughout this article, I will be using information that I gained from my personal interview with Billy Quesse.

Olson — The Stretch of Holiday Decorations 21

difference—they’re just random items people put up around the house for fun. Well, “come with me, and you’ll be in a world of pure imagination, take a look, and you’ll see” just what fun Christmas lights can be (Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory). For a few years now, one of my friends, Billy Quesse, creates a Christmas light show at his home. When he lived in Reno, Nevada, he started small by creating a light show in his work cubicle. In 2014, when Billy and his wife, Gracelyn, decided to move to Illinois, the light show transferred to his house. He might have started small, but over the years, it grew more advanced as Billy learned more about the process. When I say Christmas light show, you might be thinking that he just hangs some lights on the house and artfully drapes them over the bushes and trees. No. By Christmas light show, I mean it’s a choreographed musical number. When you drive by the house, you can’t just slowly drive past it as you would for a lighted display, you have to stop and watch the show. You see a sign saying a radio station number, and you tune into that station. The lights change colors and turn on and off to create this visual display of what the music is saying. The lights even create images that can go with the music and add to the story that the lights and music are creating. In other words, when Billy creates a display, he becomes a choreographer of these little dancing lights.

Figure 2: The light show in Billy’s cubicle.

Figure 3: Billy’s house featuring the light show with the radio station sign.


In 2016, the Cubs won the World Series. Being a big Cubs fan, Billy decided to include the Cubs in his light show. He used the song “Go! Cubs! Go!” and coordinated the lights to it. Every year, Gracelyn records the light show, and Billy uploads it to various social media sites. That year, he uploaded the light show to Reddit, and because of the Cubs theme, it was shared more than normal, so a popular blog wrote about it. Soon afterward, Billy received a call from a WGN producer asking if they could include the light show on Chicago’s WGN news. Mike Ewing wrote the WGN news story on it. I remember seeing my friends, who had never even met Billy, sharing the WGN news story about it. The viral story increased the show’s popularity. Lines of cars filled the street. Luckily, they live in a small town cul-de-sac, and the neighbors were great sports about it all. When Billy made this light show, he never dreamed it would become that popular. Now, strangers stop Billy and Gracelyn to find out what the new show will be.

Let’s use this new example to further examine holiday decorations from our Writing Program perspective. The creation of these light shows and decorative scenes are examples of literate activity. Literate activity is everything that goes into creating or using writing in any form. Literate activity also describes the process of how genres are produced. Since these light shows and decorative scenes are genres produced through literate activity, let’s examine them through a cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) lens. Illinois State University’s (ISU’s) Writing Program adapts this theory to use it as a tool to examine literate activities and how people navigate these literate activity systems. These decorations leave an impact, and ISU CHAT will allow us to analyze just what goes into the creation of them and what actually creates that impact. The key ISU CHAT terms that we will be specifically focusing on in this analysis are ecology, socialization, representation, reception, and distribution.

When it comes to creating the decorations, the environmental factors make a difference, which leads to the first ISU CHAT term we will use in our analysis. The ISU CHAT term ecology examines the outside forces that influence our texts or literate activity. In the case of the light shows, ecology deals with how the environment impacts the creation of these shows and scenes. Since we live in Illinois, the weather always has a mind of its own, so we must account for rain and snow and windy conditions. Billy especially must accommodate for it so that it doesn’t ruin his show or cause a disaster at his house. When Billy is designing his light show, he has to make sure that everything functions properly and can work even when there is snow. For instance, the lights he uses aren’t automatically waterproof, so he must modify them to keep them safe. He solders new waterproof input and output connectors onto the strands of lights, which is a time-consuming process that


he has to do beforehand. Also, if the power goes out, the show, unfortunately, can’t go on since it needs electricity. He also has to consider his surrounding environment, which includes neighbors. He has set limits on when the lights go on and when they go off so that the neighbors aren’t kept awake by the lights all night. The fact that his house is in a cul-de-sac also helps keep the traffic down to just the neighbors, their guests, and the people coming to see the show. Not all neighbors are going to be happy about a light show, and as a result, some people might run into issues with their neighbors.

What Happens If Your Neighbors Think the Show Is Cool?

Some neighbors might really like it though! For example, I have seen a light show (not Billy’s), that just covered one house, and then the next year, it covered the next couple of houses. Why would more houses have joined in? Well, the show had grown in popularity. What comes next after something becomes popular? When it comes to ISU CHAT, what comes next would be called socialization. Socialization is when the engagement of people influences a literate activity and how that engagement can create change. After something becomes popular, people work to change it, improve it, and make it even bigger and better. The neighbors must’ve wanted to participate and let the person expand their show by including their houses in it. In the case of that light show creator’s house, their ecology, or their environment, grew with the addition of the neighbors’ houses, which then impacts the show and what they plan to do. It’s a similar concept if you have ever created a poster before. Let’s say the original show was a poster created using a piece of construction paper as the base. A piece of construction paper is small, so you have to take its environment, or its size, into account when planning. When the neighbors added their own houses and yards into the mix, the construction-paper-size poster has now grown to be a full-size poster board. Would the same design and plan for a piece of construction paper work well with a poster board? Typically, no, it would not work well because it wouldn’t look right spatially. As a result, the light show creator then had

Figure 4: Getting ready to solder the connectors!


to adapt and change their plan in order to account for this new addition of space. They need to go bigger and better. In ISU CHAT terms, this planning is representation. Representation is the stage of planning and the conceptualization of a text. Activities and materials can influence this process, and when it comes to a change in space available, the representation has to be changed.

A Plan Is Made Pixel by Pixel

Because Billy’s show has grown in popularity and because technology has improved, he is constantly updating his show and making adjustments to it. The representation, or planning stage, of his show is a long process that starts months in advance. Each year comes with new changes. For example, for the 2018 show, Billy fixed over a thousand new pixels with new waterproof connectors. He also replaced the miniature trees that are located in the yard itself with a superior design that can give him twice the lights and twice the height of the trees that he has used in the past. He had to adjust his programming to incorporate these new ranges and new amounts of lights. Whenever Billy creates a show, he must map it out, and the mapping must be from a specific reference point, which would be a point in front of his house at a certain distance, and this mapping must account for every single pixel’s location. The control signal has to be passed along through all the

lights, so he also has to make sure every single light strand creates a line by being connected together from beginning to end. When it comes to the control signal, Billy uses a software, xLights, to help him, and he can create pixel formation models that he can reuse from year to year. However, when he adds a new one, he has to create a new model. For each model, he also has to know exactly how the pixels are wired within that model. It’s a complicated, time-consuming process that definitely pays off!

When it comes to creating the shows, Billy must account for the typical genre conventions, or in other words, the standard features of light shows. What each show includes is different. You can run into some shows that are the same though because

Figure 5: The upgraded tree design added in 2018.


people are selling already designed programs so that people can easily set up the light show without having to have technical experience. Many factors go into the planning process, or the representation, of the shows themselves. More people want to make them, so they are buying premade programs and using them. They can be cool, but they end up being the same.

Typically, as far as standard genre conventions go, the light shows include at least one or two well-known Christmas songs. They also may throw other types of songs or sounds into the mix. Many shows tend to include songs from the popular Disney movie, Frozen. Looking at Christmas lights tends to be a family activity, which means the Disney songs would be a hit with the children. Some shows include clips or music from A Charlie Brown Christmas. I’ve also seen ones that include the national anthem and all the military anthems. A few shows I’ve watched mimicked the popular scene from National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation by having the lights all go bright and then suddenly go off as if the electricity went out.

Billy’s show is unique in how he creates his own original choreography for his lights. For his shows, Billy adjusts the genre conventions in order to stick to his own personal interests, which do not include anything Elsa-related. He does make sure to stick to the most standard genre convention by including some Christmas music to celebrate the season, but even then, he does it all with a twist. Billy typically chooses Christmas music played by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, which is also a more unique choice for his shows in comparison to other shows.

For his personal interests, Billy has also included all of his favorite sports teams. He included the 1996 introduction of the Chicago Bulls for the NBA Finals during Game Six and had the Bulls logo and Michael Jordan’s shadow move across the windows while the team colors flashed. Just hearing that introduction makes me remember watching the games on television and rooting for the Bulls. This memory is why Billy picked it—because it was such a cool part of our childhood. The old Fighting Illini war chant has been included, which represents Billy’s alma mater. He couldn’t forget the Chicago Blackhawks or Bears, so he incorporated their songs, colors, and logos, too. In 2017, the beginning of the show included a portion from the movie Apollo 13 that made it seem as if NASA was checking the lights, which

Figure 6: One of five control panels used to control the pixels and power supply.


led to a countdown and the image of a rocket launching, which launched us into the rest of the show. Star Wars: The Last Jedi premiered in 2017, so Billy also included Star Wars music and had the lights mimic lightsabers. Images of Darth Vader, R2-D2, and the Death Star made an appearance. The 2018 show included arcade games. Pac-Man ran all around the edges of the house and across the matrices while the ghosts hunted him.

Billy’s ability to include his personal interests has increased thanks to the advancement of production tools. Billy can show images on matrices, which are grids of pixels. He puts these matrices in his windows. Billy explained to me that the ones he uses contain 200 lights each, or in other words, are ten-by-twenty pixels. He likes keeping them small in order to create a limitation that allows him to find the best arrangements to really put in a wow factor. In other words, the size gives him a challenge, and it’s a challenge that people can easily see and understand. Some people use large matrices, but as Billy would point out to you, large matrices really are just large televisions, and what would be the challenge or fun then?

Go! Billy! Go!

When Billy created his light show, he never dreamed it would catch national attention. He originally made it for everyone in the surrounding community to be able to enjoy. Thanks to Cubs fans enjoying the show so much, the reception of the show has gone beyond just his local community, and the video spread like wildfire across social media. In ISU CHAT terms, reception is how the audience, whether an intended or unintended audience, reacts to an activity and responds. Their reception can influence the distribution, which is how the piece is taken up and shared with others. All the sharing on social media was how the show was distributed. What happened next, or the trajectory of the light show itself, was how the video jumped from Reddit to a blog to WGN and was shared by tons of people. What came next then, or the socialization, is how he has expanded and modified the show in order to make it even more impressive and to appeal to his now bigger audience. I’d say the reception of the show was incredibly positive since WGN-TV’s Facebook post about their article on the light show was shared over nineteen thousand times. The video itself has received more than a million views (WGN-TV). WGN-TV tagged his Facebook page, Quesse Christmas Light Show, and his page now has close to two thousand likes. I know those numbers might not seem impressive in comparison to the number of followers celebrities have, but it’s all for a Christmas light show in a small town in the middle of Illinois.


Pause for Uptake

Let’s explore a little of my uptake, or how I process a new idea, which all begins when my antecedent knowledge, or the ideas that are already in my head, creates connections to the new idea in order for me to process, learn, and use the new information. Uptake is thus the acknowledgment and explanation of this process, which allows a person to draw conclusions that can be used for future learning. For example, earlier when introducing Billy’s story, I mentioned how when I say Christmas light show, you might be just thinking that he hangs some lights on the house and artfully drapes them over the bushes and trees. I was anticipating your antecedent knowledge to consist of artfully draped lights so that I could help you process the light show concept. From my own ghost experience and from Billy’s light show, when it comes to holiday decorations, my uptake is that they can make someone’s day brighter. If the decorations are inside, they would be for the enjoyment of the people living there and their guests. If the decorations are outside, they are meant to be enjoyed not only by themselves when they return home at night but also by their neighbors, their neighbors’ visitors, and other people who drive by. On Christmas Eve while growing up, my family would attend church and then drive around to see all the Christmas lights we could find. We would ooh and ahh over them and decide which ones were our favorite displays. Sometimes, we went to see specific houses because the local newspaper included pictures of them or there had been a contest for the best-decorated house. We still like to drive and see the light displays, but the displays are much different now because there is so much more variety and availability of decorations.

The Life of a Holiday Decoration

When it comes to genres, there are many ways to understand the concept of trajectory, but when I think of trajectory as it is used in our Writing Program, I think of it in terms of the life of an inanimate object. If you have to think in Beauty and the Beast terms, then “Be [my] Guest.” Stretch, my ghost decoration, had a life of his own. His trajectory went on an unexpected route. Of course, I had hoped that people would enjoy seeing him. I had hoped he would seem a little more like Stretch’s nephew, Casper—to be seen as friendly—rather than as scary to children, unlike Stretch who actually tries to terrify everyone. I will admit I loved to turn the ghost on when someone was walking by and watch their reactions. Once and a while, they jumped. However, despite me wanting Stretch to seem friendly, I didn’t think he would be seen as friendly in the way that he was someone’s friend. The ghost became the friend of the children as they said good night to him


every night. Stretch essentially had come to life. In all my planning, or my representation, I hadn’t considered he would have received such a great reaction, or reception, from people. As a result, though, what came next, or the socialization of it, was that I made sure that Stretch made his appearance every night without fail from then on. From Billy’s encounters with his fans, he knows that many children request nightly viewings of his light show. His shows, despite their lack of Elsa, are enjoyed by children more than he had anticipated. Let’s face it—who doesn’t like seeing a child’s face light up?

Because the children had reacted so well to my ghost, I wanted to do more for my holiday decorating. The ghost was good at handling the weather, so his construction was planned appropriately for the environmental—or ecological—factors of a windy fall season. However, for Christmas, the Force was not strong in ecology. I had air-blown, pre-lit inflatables of Darth Vader and Yoda, Star Wars characters. Yoda’s motor ran too much to keep him filled during some really windy days, and the motor gave out. Darth Vader was strong motor-wise, but he had a poor construction as far as tying him down goes, so he acted more like a balloon and tried flying either backward or forward. Plus, they didn’t include a bright enough light in Darth Vader to contrast the black, so he was very hard to see even if he did stand up properly.

However, thanks to the children’s reception of the ghost, I tried very hard to keep him up in case the kids enjoyed seeing him too. If they weren’t fans of Darth Vader, I just hope they enjoyed my air-blown, pre-lit inflatables of a cute little penguin family since they stayed put and were well lit. The penguin family could withstand the ecological factors better and were probably way friendlier in appearance, which might give them an even wider reception.

Figure 7: Watch the videos! See the light show!


Now, when you see holiday decorations, hopefully, you will think of them differently and see them as way more complex than you ever did before. If you watch a light show, see if you can tell if it’s a preprogrammed type or if it’s self-made. Think about the countless hours spent on these productions. In other words, even if you think you are too old to go around the neighborhood to see holiday decorations, please do so. Keep the kid at heart alive. See what people created. You never know what gems you might find!

Acknowledgment

I want to give special thanks to Billy Quesse for answering my persistent questions and for his effort in helping me to understand his process. Without him, this article would not be possible. If you would like to check out his show, please go to fb.com/quesselights or search for Quesse Christmas Light Show on Facebook.

Works Cited

Beauty and the Beast. Directed by Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise, performances by Paige O’Hara, Robby Benson, Jerry Orbach, and David Ogden Stiers, Walt Disney Pictures, 1991.

Ewing, Mike. “Christmas Lights Show Set to ‘Go Cubs Go’ Brings World Series Cheer to the Holidays.” WGN9, a Tribune Broadcasting Station, 1 Dec. 2016, https://wgntv.com/2016/11/30/christmas -lights-show-set-to-go-cubs-go-brings-world-series-cheer-to-the -holidays/?fbcl id=IwAR3UC4a8pDgKRfAjj lL_s4K8oDfq_ UQARLaciMkQXsVaPL7SaSMDuWw3JrI.

It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. Directed by Bill Melendez, written by Charles M. Schulz, Lee Mendelson Productions, 1966.

Quesse, Billy. Personal Interview. Fall 2018.

WGN TV. Quesse Christmas Light Show. Facebook, 1 Dec. 2016, 7:39 a.m., www.facebook.com/WGNTV.

Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. Directed by Mel Stuart, written by Roald Dahl, performances by Gene Wilder, Jack Albertson, and Peter Ostrum, Paramount Pictures, 1971.


Rebecca Olson is seeking her Master’s degree in English at Illinois State University. She has an affinity for nineties pop music, Disney, and Mountain Dew. According to her peers, she is the youngest thirty something to ever exist.

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Rebecca Olson - ISU Writing