IStock Photo 8172466 © Marcus Clackson

It all started with a dare in 2005. Brad Voyink’s friend challenged him to put up a better Christmas display than one featured in a beer commercial.

This evening—and every evening until December 26th—you can see the results for yourself. Some 200,000 Christmas lights, synchronized to a 12-song playlist that includes Michael Bolton, Mariah Carey, and the Nutcracker Suite, will flicker and shine on 14 homes on a cul-de-sac in Michigan. Don’t worry about missing anything—there are volunteers to wave you through the entire display, making certain you hear every song.

The odds are 1 in 1.49 (67%) that an adult will plan to decorate his or her home for the holidays. And some of us go a little crazy, sometimes drawing complaints from neighbors and even law enforcement officers.

Carson Williams of Deerfield Township, Ohio, learned this lesson in 2005 when his home display was actually turned into a Miller Lite commercial. Williams installed 25,000 Christmas lights and synchronized them to “Frosty the Snowman,” “God Bless the USA,” and “Wizards of Winter.” But police ordered he take them down after a traffic jam prevented them from reaching the scene of a car accident in his neighborhood. The next year he was back in business, having moved his wizardry to a nearby shopping mall.

Although most people don’t go to this extreme, the total spent on seasonal decorations is astronomical: a whopping $16 billion in 2006, according to Mintel International Group, a market research firm. But that isn’t too surprising when you consider the price tag for some Christmas decorations.

For $52,000, you can buy a 24-foot “ sphere tree,” which features balls of LED lights arranged in the shape of a fir tree, from Dekra-Lite. And that’s child’s play compared to what some jewelers have done. Ginza Tanaka in Japan last year put on display a 24K gold Christmas tree billed as the world’s most expensive Christmas tree, at $1.68 million. And if you have any money left over, you can decorate it with a Hallmark Jewelers ornament that features 1,578 diamonds and costs $130,000.

Home lighting displays like the ones Williams and Boyink used are a bit cheaper. Williams bought his setup from Light-O-Rama, which has an online store featuring light and music synchronization kits ranging from a few hundred dollars to several thousand dollars. They provide the circuitry and software, but you still need to supply the lights and computer to run the light show.

Light-O-Rama’s website features user-submitted videos of the “best” home displays. But you have to wonder if any of them will also end up on TackyChristmasYards.com or UglyChristmasLights.com.

There you can browse through photos of Christmas displays that others find tasteless or are at least unable to explain. One photo, at TackyChristmasYards.com, shows a lit-up nativity scene placed on a roof. And the headline over it reads, “I thought Santa landed on the roof?!”