Holiday Light Extravaganza in Groton, NY

NOTE November 2023: According to the Scottland Lights Facebook page, the start date has been postponed to December 3 (but check the page to be sure) due to a failed controller.

Some of us love the holidays — baking cookies, lighting candles, giving gifts, singing, being with friends…And then, some of us LOVE the holidays. Like the Scott family in Groton, NY.

In fact, they’ve made spreading holiday cheer their hobby. Every year, their house at 411 Peru Road lights up with a colorful display of 23,000 pixels that’s perfectly synchronized to up to 90 minutes of Christmas songs and other favorite tunes.

From right after Thanksgiving until early January, you can pull up in your car, tune your radio to 89.7 FM and enjoy the show.

Here’s what to expect.

Visiting the holiday lights at 411 Peru Road

We visited for the first time on a mid-December weekend. The house (on the right if you’re coming from the south on Rt 38) was easy enough to spot, since you can see the lights as you approach. 

We were expecting it to be busy on a Saturday night after dinner — and it was. But according to John Scott, the main force behind the light show, that’s true most days until about 9 PM, when the number of cars tapers off for the night.

You can park on either side of the road, put your flashers on, and turn your headlights off if your car allows. John just asks that you take care not to block the neighbors’ driveways. 

I thought the view was better from closer up, but on that side I was also sitting right by the window rather than having my view blocked by someone else in the car.

When it’s warm enough, people sometimes even get out of their cars and dance in the yard. “People have a blast,” John said. “I have some people coming to watch every night.”

If you enjoy your first visit, you may want to come back to take in the different shows. On Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday, John plays more religious songs such as Amazing Grace or We Three Kings (one of his personal favorites). On Monday and Wednesday, you’ll hear classic radio Christmas songs. And on Friday and Saturday, he combines both into a longer show.

You can stay for just a few minutes or enjoy the whole playlist. 

You’ll hear everything from traditional Christmas songs to hits from Disney movies (“Let it go” and a Moana song played while we were there), with the colors and combinations of lights changing rhythmically to the music. Besides long strings of lights, you’ll see a giant snowflake on the garage, a nativity scene in the front yard, and a couple of Christmas-tree-shaped arrangements.

Before you leave, please consider putting a few dollars into the donation box in the yard. In 2020, the Scott family collected $1400 for the Cayuga Medical Center Foundation. In 2021, all funds will go to the Groton Food Pantry.

The story behind the lights

After seeing how much energy and care the family has put into lighting up the season for everyone who visits, I was curious about their story and gave John a call.

John’s an interesting guy, originally from New York City. He started out as a musician and played the guitar in bands with such greats as Bob Dylan, Jeff Beck, and Jeff Lynne. Eventually he switched careers to work first as a telephone operator and then a lineman for a phone company for a decade.

It was his wife, Beth Underwood Scott, who first asked him to put lights on their home. (It’s telling that they got married on Christmas Eve.) Things started innocently enough around 2005 with some static lights — and then the display just kept growing. 

John introduced dynamic effects three years later with a a Light-O-Rama setup. In the meantime he’s transitioned to using Wifi and a bunch of Raspberry Pis (small Linux-based computers) to control a sophisticated setup of pixels.

Each pixel consists of three diodes — red, green, and blue — that can be mixed with different intensities to make any color. (It’s the same technology that’s in your TV.)

John taught himself how to program them by watching videos and learning from the “massive community” that exists around this kind of holiday light programming and specifically around xLights, the program he uses now. (John believes he’s the only one in the immediate area. There are some other xLight users in Syracuse, Elmira, and Binghamton.)

“Being a musician makes it easier to program because I can anticipate the music,” John said. “I also have the ability that when I hear music, I remember it forever. That really helps.”

Still, it takes at least 40 hours to program an average, 3-minute song.

As you can imagine, preparing a show like this can easily turn into a year-round hobby. “Some people drink, I blink,” John joked.

While he has about 55 songs completed, he likes to add a few new options every year and switch songs in and out to keep things interesting.

He starts sequencing the new songs as early as January, and in the spring he and Beth go outside to take stock and think about new ways to arrange the lights outside. They start setting them up in late September or early October when it’s still warmer.

This year, he also spent a week just figuring out his new multiple-Raspberry-Pi setup and invested a weekend in redoing a light tree felled by strong winds. “It was a lot of work,” John said. Oh yeah, and he’s doing all of this while legally blind.

“They say I’m crazy, or at least my wife does,” John laughed. “But I like to keep myself active, now that I’m retired because of my eyes.”

And what he really loves is to see the joy his visitors get out of the light show. “To hear kids laugh, that’s what it’s all about,” he said.

Light show logistics

• Dates: right after Thanksgiving (verify the exact days on the Facebook site) until January 6.
• Hours: 4.30 PM until 10.30 PM Sunday through Thursday, until 11 PM Friday and Saturday
• Shows: religious (Su, Tu, Th), popular (Mo, We), combo of both (Fr, Sa)
• Special event: If you show up on Christmas Eve sometime between 5.30 and 7 pm (give or take half an hour), you may just run into Santa and Mrs. Claus handing out candy canes.
• If you have any sensitivities to flickering lights, this may not be the best show for you.

Other light shows you may enjoy

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If you enjoy holiday light displays, make sure to also check out Lights on the Lake in Liverpool or the Finger Lakes Festival of Lights in Burdett.

Have you been to the 411 Peru Road light show? Do you know the Scott family? Tell us more in the comments below!

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