The History of Cypress Holidays
More Than 20 Years of Lights, Music and Christmas Memories
The story of Cypress Holidays actually begins several years before there was a Johnson’s Christmas Corner, and several hundred miles away from Cypress, Texas.
Christmas was a big part of both of our lives growing up, although our experiences with the holiday were very different. Rachel grew up in New Mexico, where Christmas is influenced by the unique combination of Native American, Hispanic and Anglo cultures found throughout the state. The holidays there meant traditions such as farolitos and luminarias glowing along streets and rooftops, traditional foods, community celebrations and customs that have been passed from one generation to another. You can read more about some of those traditions in our article, A Unique Blend of Cultures.
Ryan grew up in Pennsylvania, where Christmas had a decidedly different feel. Winter actually looked and felt like winter. Cold weather, bare trees and the possibility of snow provided the backdrop for the classic Christmas scenes that fill holiday movies and Christmas cards. He also spent time living in New York City and fell in love with the Christmas spirit that seems to take over the city during the holidays. The lights, decorated storefronts, crowds, music and sheer scale of Christmas in New York created another set of memories and influences.
When we got together in 1998, we were living in New Mexico, and decorating for Christmas quickly became something we did together. We didn’t have computerized controllers, synchronized music or tens of thousands of lights. We simply enjoyed decorating for the holidays. Every place we lived got Christmas lights and decorations, and every year there always seemed to be another idea or something else we wanted to add.
In January 2005, we moved to Cypress, Texas. That Christmas we decorated our new home just as we had in New Mexico, and the first version of what would become Johnson’s Christmas Corner appeared. At the time, it was still a traditional Christmas display, but that didn’t last long.
Just one year later, in 2006, we added Light-O-Rama computerized controllers and created our first animated Christmas display. For the first time, the lights didn’t simply turn on at dusk. They flashed, faded, shimmered and chased across the house in synchronization with music. There had been exactly one season of a traditional display at the Corner before we apparently decided that wasn’t complicated enough. The Christmas decorations had become a Christmas show, and once that happened there really wasn’t any going back.
Over the next few years, the display continued to grow. More lights appeared, more songs were programmed and more visitors began finding their way to the Corner. Programming became almost as much a part of Christmas as putting up the lights themselves. Eventually, the show would include as many as 50 individually programmed songs, each requiring its own sequence of lighting effects synchronized to the music.
The lights, however, were only part of what Johnson’s Christmas Corner was becoming. In 2009, Santa Claus made his first appearance. What began as another fun addition quickly became one of our favorite traditions. Children could visit Santa surrounded by Christmas lights, tell him what they wanted for Christmas and have their pictures taken. Over time, Santa became every bit as much a part of the Corner as the lights and music.
As the display grew, so did the number of people who came to see it. By 2011, Johnson’s Christmas Corner had attracted the attention of the Cypress Creek Mirror, which featured the display in its December 22 edition. More importantly, we began hearing from families who told us that visiting the Corner had become part of their own Christmas traditions. Something our family had started because we loved decorating was becoming something other families looked forward to each year.
In 2013, we decided to take the music in an even more ambitious direction. Instead of presenting essentially the same show every night, each weekday received its own musical personality. Mondays featured classic Christmas carols, while Tuesdays brought the modern Christmas sounds of artists such as Trans-Siberian Orchestra and Mannheim Steamroller. Wednesdays turned up the volume for Rock N Roll Christmas, Thursdays went country, and on Fridays Christmas music stepped aside for Movies at the Corner, when we synchronized the lights to memorable movie themes from across genres. Weekends mixed everything together. That five-theme-night format continued through 2019, and at its largest our collection included as many as 50 synchronized songs. Yes, that was as much programming as it sounds like.
By 2014, the display had grown to approximately 44,000 lights, and the Houston Chronicle came out to tell the story of Johnson’s Christmas Corner. Setup could consume more than 60 hours, the garage had largely surrendered its original purpose to numbered bins of Christmas decorations, and people were stopping before Thanksgiving to ask when the show would begin.
Our daughters have sometimes handed candy canes to visitors. On movie nights there might be popcorn, and when Texas weather decided to cooperate and actually feel like December, there could even be hot chocolate. Those things weren’t controlled by a computer and didn’t flash to music, but they became just as important to what the Corner was about. The display was becoming less about how many lights we could put on the house and more about creating an experience families could enjoy together.
Christmas lighting technology was changing during those years as well. In 2015, we began introducing LED lights into the display. They consumed considerably less electricity than the incandescent lights that had defined the early years and gave us more flexibility to continue expanding. For a display that had grown from decorating a house to powering tens of thousands of lights, electrical load was definitely not a minor consideration.
Then, in 2023, we introduced our first RGB pixels and began another major transformation of the display. Traditional Christmas light strings are generally controlled together, but pixels allow individual lights to be controlled independently, including their color and intensity. Suddenly, a single prop could create effects that would have been impossible with the equipment we used when our lights first began dancing back in 2006.
Pixels didn’t replace the traditional elements of Johnson’s Christmas Corner. They simply gave us another tool. Incandescent lights, LEDs, computerized controllers, pixels and newer technologies have all played a role in the display at different points in its history. Some props have become traditions, others have been retired, and every year seems to bring another idea that sounds perfectly reasonable when we think of it and considerably less reasonable when we’re standing in the yard trying to install it.
Our daughters have grown up alongside the display, and the technology we use today would have seemed almost unimaginable when we started decorating together in New Mexico in 1998. But underneath all of that technology, not much has really changed. The Christmas traditions Rachel knew growing up in New Mexico, the classic winter Christmases Ryan remembers from Pennsylvania, the unmistakable holiday spirit of New York City, and the traditions we’ve created together as a family have all found their way, in one form or another, to our little corner of Cypress.
That’s really what Johnson’s Christmas Corner has always been about. We love Christmas, we love creating things, and we enjoy watching a regular house on a regular street in Cypress become something completely different for a few weeks every year. Even better is knowing that something our family started simply because we enjoyed it has become part of the Christmas season for other families as well.
A lot has changed since we first started decorating together in 1998 and since Johnson’s Christmas Corner officially began in 2005. The lights have changed. The music has changed. The technology has definitely changed.
The reason we turn them on hasn’t.
And we’re nowhere near finished.
