Judy Pancoast's Song About Crazy Christmas Displays Sparked Some Videos
and Some Even Crazier Attention
By SARAH RODMAN
Boston Globe Staff
There's
one in every town... Sometimes there are several. Perhaps since
Thanksgiving you’ve already driven by one. Or, maybe, it’s
even your house. You know the one. It’s got a blinding array of
colored lights, Santa urging his reindeer toward maximum altitude on
the roof, Frosty kicking back with his corncob pipe out front, and the
first family of Christianity nestled in their shelter on the lawn. That
house now has its very own theme song in Judy Pancoast's delightful
seasonal ditty, "The House on Christmas Street."
In it, Pancoast, an award-winning children’s music singer-songwriter,
details all of the above and more over a zippy, holiday-appropriate
blend of bright horns and icicle-cool piano. From the "47,000"
lights to the Nativity scene to "a couple of carolers singing by
the lamppost," Pancoast - whose warm croon recalls Karen Carpenter
- covers it all with a tune that you could envision as the soundtrack
for the interior of a snow globe.
The Maine native drew inspiration from a particular house during her
childhood in Waterville. "They had singing angels and moving Santas.
It was not your average Christmas display," she says from New Hampshire,
where she now makes her home, which boasts a more restrained spectacle
than the one in her song. "We actually used to make it a night
to go up there and look at this display. And then through the years
I've noticed there seems to be a house like that in every community,
the house that goes crazy."
And while Santa may be doing things the old-fashioned way at his North
Pole workshop, Pancoast owes the recent, snowballing success of ‘‘House’’
to a decidedly newfangled invention.
"This wouldn't have happened without the Internet," she says.
"This guy set his houselights to play to my song and somebody put
the video online. I didn't find it until October 2006 when my husband
happened to Google the name of the song just for the heck of it."
Pancoast was flabbergasted to see a complete stranger's home and, after
searching, dozens more twinkling to the beat of her tune. Mainly, she
says, "because I wrote and recorded the song in 1998."
The song, available on a self-produced CD of the same name, had gotten
some airplay over the years on scattered radio stations and the satellite
outpost XM through Pancoast's own marketing efforts. (She would send
the disc out in a box of ribbon candy. Oldies 103.3 program director
Pete Falconi, for one, liked the song - or the candy - so much that
he hired Pancoast as a fill-in DJ.) But once it hit the Web, it went
viral and became the toast of those already bitten by the hall-decking
bug.
"I didn't know this but these people who decorate the houses,
they all network, they're crazy! But in a good way," Pancoast says
with a laugh. Some of "these people" congregate at PlanetChristmas!.com,
a site for display enthusiasts founded by Chuck Smith.
"It seemed like it was written for us," says Smith, who invited
the singer to perform at PLUS - the Planet Christmas Lights Up Symposium
- this past August in Gatlinburg, Tenn. "Judy was our main performer,
and she just rocked the house."
And "House" is the gift that keeps on giving. Through PLUS,
attended by 400 yuletide cheerleaders, Pancoast hooked up with Light-o-Rama,
which licensed "The House on Christmas Street" for use in
its synchronized lighting systems.
After her appearance, Smith says the Planet Christmas message boards
lit up with chatter from people "discussing the song and how they
were going to make their display fit the song." He points out,
however, "in our world a lot of the really fanatical ones would
say 47,000 lights is not near enough."
Indeed, Mark Mousseau won’t divulge what his January electric
bill is "unless you're willing to pay it" but it's a good
bet that the number of bulbs on his house is in the six figures. (You
can count for yourself at hudsonchristmas.com.) Mousseau and his stepfather,
Paul Roy, are synching the annual extravaganza at their Hudson, N.H.,
home to Pancoast's song for the second year in a row.
"I just thought it was a catchy tune," says Mousseau, who
was familiar with Pancoast and was pleased to see her success at PLUS,
which he also attended.
Pancoast enjoys her full-time gig as a children's performer - "to
be part of somebody's childhood, that’s great" - and has
been pleased to watch the Christmas types migrate to her critically
distinguished non-holiday releases. But she has high hopes for her nearly
decade-old "House."
"My dream would be to have it come back every year,’’
she says, with visions of performing it in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day
Parade or on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show." "So many of
the songs that artists are coming out with at Christmastime now are
so depressing and sad. They’re nice songs, but at Christmastime
I want to be happy."
Which is exactly what the decorators aim for every year, too, Smith
says. "I like to tell folks that we’re in the memory-making
business, because it’s our homes that people remember for the
rest of their lives."
Pancoast can attest to that. Another piece of the foundation for "House"
came from a bleak 1984 holiday season. Divorced, depressed, and drifting,
Pancoast was on her way home from work late at night. "It's pitch
black, nobody’s around, and I come around the corner and there’s
this house that’s all just blasting with lights," she recalls.
"I pulled over to the side of the road and I just sat there and
looked at it for maybe a half hour, and it really cheered me up. And
I went home and the next day I decorated my apartment. It just lifted
my spirits."