12 Days of Christmas Ideas: Christmas Lights as Stage Lighting

Using Christmas lights in a stage design isn’t anything new for most churches. But here are a few ideas on how to use Christmas lights that you might have not considered before.

Try these out as standalone stage elements or incorporate them into a more elaborate stage design.

Strands

The easiest way to use Christmas lights on your stage is to simply use them the normal way. You can wrap them around trees, around garland, or even just hang them straight down. If you put them on multiple controlled channels, you can do all sorts of fun stuff with them.

Shapes

You could also use Christmas lights in a similar way people are using LED tape ? geometric shapes. You could either attach them directly to a wall or build a structure out of lumber or PVC pipes. Here are a few ideas for shapes that would work well with Christmas lights:

• Triangles like Christmas trees.
• Stars.
• Circles like ornaments.
• Squares like Christmas presents.
• Lines that look like tree branches.
• Squiggly lines that look like wind gusts.

There are loads of great options. Of course, some of these shapes would work best if you organize the lights into a straight line with each bulb facing the same direction. But some of them would work fine with a more messy arrangement.

Also, instead of Christmas lights, you could try LED pixel tape and only brighten some at a time. It would give you the illusion of Christmas lights but much more flexibility on colors and usage. Here’s a quick rundown of how to use LED pixel tape.

Stars

For Christmas, Christmas lights give you a great option of incorporating a starry night look into your stage design. You could do this a few different?ways.

1. Black Fabric Over a Grid

You could create a grid of Christmas lights on a wall or stage flat, then add translucent black fabric in front of it. That would you give you a muted starry look; it looks pretty realistic.

2. Holes Poked Through Rigid Material

If you want a harsher Christmas light look, you could easily drill or poke holes through various materials and plug the lights into the holes through the back. You could use plywood, styrofoam, or even Coroplast. This would allow you to go random with your lights or a bit more orderly.

Bonus: You could also build a cityscape and use Christmas lights like lit windows in the night.

3. Christmas Lights Behind White Fabric

You can also make the Christmas lights look a bit more like fireflies by surrounding them with white fabric ? either tule or some other translucent fabric. Christmas lights could easily go into a bowl, trusses, or some other container. The light white fabric just helps to reflect the light.

Vines

My favorite type of Christmas lights are these new copper wire lights. They’re LED lights in copper wire so they’re easily moldable. You can wrap these around letters, pallets, plants, or just turn them into their own shape. They look a lot like magical vines.

Plus, the big bonus is that they don’t tangle that badly. So you can easily re-use them for future purposes.

Tips for Using Them Well

• Use new sets of lights if they’re traditional Christmas lights. It costs more, but it’ll save you time so you don’t have to untangle them or replace broken bulbs.
• Use them on inherently flame resistant?or fire treated materials for safety ? consumer-grade Christmas lights aren’t always the safest. (Best check with a fire marshal to make sure it all passes codes.)
• Here are 19 pages of stage designs that use Christmas lights.

Have you used Christmas lights well as stage lighting in your church? Share pics in a comment below of Christmases past. Or share a link if you have a write-up of unique things you did with Christmas lights.