A very Cary Christmas: Cary man uses his electrical expertise to brighten the holidays

Beginning at 5:30 p.m. each night, the display spreads holiday cheer with lighting effects, music and well known holiday characters. According to Johnson, approximately 100 cars a night stop by his home at 101 Chestone Court to take in all of the magic.

In order to create the show, the engineer uses the light synchronizing software, Light-O-Rama, to customize each flashing figure. And, despite his expertise, it took him quite some time to set up his system and learn the software.

"It's definitely not for the faint of heart," he said. "The timing is the hardest thing to do."

Over approximately four years of experimenting and tinkering Johnson has been able to add new elements to his show.

This year he's added colorful flood lights and bright green Christmas trees. In previous years, he added pixilated snow flakes and candy canes. According to Johnson, pixilated figures allow maximum creativity.

"Every light bulb can be turned on individually," he said. " And you can pick the color and every bulb can be a different color."

This feature can be seen as the candy canes in the display turn different colors and reveal rainbow designs. The designs and lighting effects follow the tune of classic holiday songs like "Frosty the Snowman" and "Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer."

Johnson says the best songs to watch are "Wizards in Winter" and "A Mad Russian Christmas" both preformed by The Trans-Siberian Orchestra. He said the two songs are some of the fastest in the display and as a result all of the figures move fairly quickly.

"'Wizards in Winter' is one of my favorites," he said. "That and 'A Mad Russian Christmas.' Those look the best."

The music is transmitted through Johnson's personal radio station, 90.3, which he calls XXMAS.

The lighting and music together equates to 2,200 electrical watts, which can easily overpower an average home's breaker.

Map: Holiday light displays

"Every year I fight power problems," Johnson said. "I can't run off of one breaker. It's too much power. So I have to split, and then I have to make sure I have special equipment to keep it from feeding back into the house. Otherwise the lights in the house kind of go to the music. And that's not really what they are supposed to do."

He uses his electrical expertise to reroute power lines and build his own controllers for the display.

His hard work has even inspired his neighbors to get in on the action.

"The neighbors who live directly across the street – they moved away this year – they were a part of the show," Johnson said. "In fact, the neighbors next to them are still a part of the show. So my controllers wirelessly control their house too. And we're gonna get the new guys involved."

His goal is to make Christmas light displays a community affair.

For now, he finds joy in watching others enjoy his display.

He says hearing children scream from their cars and seeing adults cry at the sight of his display make all of the hard work worthwhile.

"It's things like that, the moment where you make an impression on somebody," Johnson said "That just makes you feel so good about it. It makes it all worthwhile."

The light show runs until 10:30 p.m. on weekdays and later on weekends. It will be available for all to enjoy throughout the rest of the holiday season.