Using a little electronic wizardry and a lot of extra cable — in the control box alone, there is enough to stretch the length of three football fields — he and his wife have been able to share their festive display with two million people in 45 countries. Not only can internet users see Mr Sintay’s lights, they can control them from as far away as China and Australia. Even his relatives in Pakistan have had a go at flicking them on and off. “I like doing crazy engineering projects, and my wife really gets into Christmas, so I thought this would be a great idea,” Mr Sintay said.

He spent 18 months working out how to get his lights online. When the moment of triumph finally came, he stood in the garden with his laptop, screaming for joy.

Now, when the lights flash from 5.30pm to 2am at his home in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Mr Sintay and his neighbours can tell that the world is watching.

By logging on to his website at www.controltheshow.com, viewers can sign up to control the lights. When they reach the top five in the queue they can watch the display and, when their turn comes, they use their mouse to click on 24 switches that turn the lights on and off or change them to combinations of red, white and blue. A camera records the scene.

Unaware that his website would become such a hit, Mr Sintay, 24, is working on making the site more powerful next year to cope with the heavy web traffic. “We’ll have 1,000 people trying to get the camera image in one second and the computer isn’t fast enough to handle that kind of request,” he said.

The set-up is every fireman’s nightmare; as well as thousands of yards of cables in the control box and on the lights, Mr Sintay and his wife Ashley have to pick their way around a mile and a half of extension cables laid around their house.

To quash speculation that the operation is a hoax, local media have visited Mr Sintay and verified that it is genuine. One viewer even sent Mr Sintay an e-mail noting that the site must be genuine because he had seen him taking out his rubbish. By asking viewers to sponsor a light for $1, Mr Sintay is also raising money for charity.

The electricity company, meanwhile, is rubbing its hands. “Our electricity bill is higher,” Mr Sintay reflected.

Lighting up

• In 1895, President Grover Cleveland sponsored the first Christmas tree with electric lights at the White House
• Last year James Cason, the most senior US diplomat in Cuba, was told to take down his Christmas lights. The lights included a number 75, a reference to 75 dissidents who were jailed that year.
• One resident in New Orleans has eight reindeer, snowmen and an illuminated Nativity scene in her garden, even though her house is too storm-damaged to live in
• Kilgore, Texas, has a tradition of suspending lights from oil derricks

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