As recommended earlier by a commenter named Steve, we visited the 4500 block of 11th Avenue South and found this cheerful house with a rotating Christmas tree! It’s hard to get a good picture because there are trees in front of the house, but we did our best. Know of other houses for us to look at? Email us or post in the comments here.

As before, here’s a map. You can scroll around or zoom the map to see all of the houses we’ve featured so far:

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We found more lights tonight. This cheerful house is on the 1700 block of South Columbian Way. (Know of others? Please tell us. We’ve gotten a couple of tips about light displays so far and were able to go out and photograph them. You’ll be seeing more photos soon.)

Here’s a map of the sites we’ve found so far (click on the map and scroll around or zoom out to see the other locations):

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Here’s another house cheerfully decorated for Christmas. This one caught my eye with its Virgin Mary with a shining neon blue halo. It’s in the 8000 block of Beacon Avenue South. (Know of more brightly-lit houses? Please tell us.)

Here’s a map showing this house’s location. If you click on the map and scroll around, or zoom out, you can see all of the houses we’ve featured so far:

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Here’s another house with some holiday lights, in the 5400 block of Beacon Avenue South. Know of any decorated houses? Email us so we can feature them here!

And here’s the updated version of our map of decorated houses. Scroll up and you’ll see the location of yesterday’s house:

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When I was very young, the local newspapers used to host a Christmas light contest each year. People would decorate their houses in amazing ways, and the newspapers would publish the list of competitors. My parents would then drive us around to see the decorated houses.

Then came 1973, and the oil shortages. Suddenly it was irresponsible to have holiday lights. The contests went away, and the city because a lot less festive. It was years before we started seeing a ton of lights again. And I missed the light shows of my early childhood.

Now, we’re back to the 1973 state of things in many ways. It’s not “green” to waste that much energy. But I still enjoy the lights anyway, at least for a few weeks each year in Seattle’s terribly dark winters. They brighten up our evenings and make the darkness easier to bear.

We’ll be featuring Beacon Hill homes with lights and decoration periodically until Christmas. Do you have some cool decorations? How about your neighbors? Please write and tell us, so we can post a picture.

Our first featured home is on the 1500 block of South Atlantic Street. (See the map at the bottom of this post.) Tons of lights, a countdown clock to Christmas, and Santa in a helicopter!

Here’s a map to help you find the house. We’ll add other holiday houses to the map over the next few weeks.

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