"We now have 60,000 lights"

When the first reports about the energy crisis and rising electricity costs came, we still thought: it won't be that bad. When it became clear that it would even get worse, my wife and I naturally considered leaving the lighting off. We've heard from others who are decorating their houses for Christmas that they're doing little or nothing this year. But in the last six months people have asked us again and again whether we would decorate again. That's when we noticed: many people see our house as a permanent focal point during the Christmas season. We didn't want to disappoint them.

Our lighting has been running for a week - we have even increased it a bit since last year, we now have around 60,000 lights. And so far nobody has come forward who doesn't like it. Of course, many visitors ask how we deal with the electricity costs – and then they might put a euro in the till. At best, in the comment columns of the media that report about us, one reads critical voices that do not approve of our lighting in these times.

In normal years, we also switch on the lights in the morning hours - for the school and kindergarten children who come by here. Let's leave that out now. And in the evening we turn off the lights at 10 p.m., not at midnight as usual. We'll see how high the electricity costs are in the end.

We have lived in this house since 2013, at first we just decorated it a bit for ourselves, then it became more and more - at some point we noticed that people came here especially. For six years, visitors have been able to come into the house in the afternoon, where everything is also illuminated. And we offer activities for the children.