A Palmetto family’s holiday home will compete in ABC’s ‘Great Christmas Light Fight’

A Palmetto family is locally famous for making the holidays bright, but this season they’ll dazzle a national audience for the first time.

The Florida home will be featured in the finale of the 10th season of “The Great Christmas Light Fight” that premieres at 8 p.m. Monday, Dec. 12, on ABC.

For Tom and Wendy Stallings, it’s all part of a simple vision: “Bringing joy of Christmas lights across the world.”

Lights of Palmetto is an annual Christmas light attraction hosted by the Stallings at their four-acre property in Manatee County.

Thousands of color-changing lights are synchronized with Christmas and popular music to illuminate a house, a barn and yard of props, many of them handmade.

“No matter what neighborhood we lived in, we always went above and beyond the typical Home Depot house,” Tom Stallings said. “I’d be one of those guys, where if the neighbors put up one thing, I’d add something more to my house.”

Tom, the lights enthusiast, got the go-ahead from wife Wendy to pursue his longtime dream of a mega-display on the day after Christmas in 2017. Then the real work began.

“It’s an all-year-round hobby,” Stallings said. “That’s what most people don’t understand. You’re building your props. You’re building your controllers. You’re testing. Some things work great, some things don’t.”

Then there’s the painstaking process of programming the lights to music. Luckily, Tom’s day job running an IT company gave him a head start on the steep learning curve.

The next holiday season, Lights of Palmetto launched with about 8,000 pixels — customizable lights that allow for infinite possibilities of color and pattern.

The show was an instant hit, Stallings says, and Lights of Palmetto had a following.

In 2019, Stallings added another 15,000 pixels to the display. 2020 brought the COVID-19 pandemic, and also a baby girl, Makayla.

Tom Stallings decided to use all the extra time around the house to dive further into his passion, and he soon got to work with the addition of another 75,000 pixels.

Lights of Palmetto now features about 110,000 pixels, over 100 3D-printed snowflakes and a 30 foot Christmas tree, among many other details.

The home first attracted the attention of show producers for “The Great Christmas Light Fight” in 2020, when it was chosen as an alternate.

While they didn’t make the show that year, Stallings applied again in 2021, and Lights of Palmetto made the cut.

The episode featuring the Stallings, which will air at 8 p.m. Monday, was filmed in November of 2021.

“It’s a bit surreal,” Stallings said of the episode premiere. “We’ve done this for Christmas. We’ve done this for kids in the neighborhood. I’m excited everybody gets to see our lights.”

For Stallings, who came up in Virginia and North Carolina, Christmas was always a special time of year. His family would fly to Florida and enjoy a reunion with the extended relatives. One thing they’d always do was go look at area light displays.

“Christmas has just always been my holiday,” Stallings said.

Admission to Lights of Palmetto is always free, though donations are collected for a local youth charity run by the Palmetto Police Department. There’s also a box where kids can drop letters to Santa. If there’s a return address, the child will get a reply, Stallings said.

The Stallings weren’t the only Florida family to make “The Great Christmas Light Fight” this year.

In an episode that aired last week, the Castle family of Palm City and the Notchick family of Jacksonville were up against competitors from California and New York. After all was judged, the trophy and a $50,000 prize went to Florida.

“Congratulations to the Dave Castle family for their win tonight on the Great Christmas Light Fight!” Lights of Palmetto shared on Facebook after the episode aired.

To be seen is whether the Stallings bring another trophy to Florida.

• Where to watch: Airing 8 p.m. Dec. 12 on ABC.; Also available to stream on Hulu.
• Visit Lights of Palmetto: Lights of Palmetto is located at 5220 69th Street East. Visitors can park and watch in their cars or walk up the sidewalk on nearby Buffalo Creek Road for another vantage point. Tune to 96.1 FM for music. Open 5:45-10 p.m. Sunday-Thursday; 5:45-11 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Free; donations for charity accepted.

This story was originally published December 12, 2022 at 5:03 PM.