OK...Christmas is right up my alley. Funny thing is that I grew up in a Jewish household and am now a hard core atheist, but I just love the "spirit". I am closer to the real life version of Clark Griswold than 99% of people you will see. For the outside of the house, I have a display where my lights dance to music that is broadcast on FM radio. I do all the programming for the dancing myself. There are lights everywhere, plus some blow ups, fabric figures, I make a tree swing with a stuffed animal in it (like they had at Osborne with Stitch in it), on and on. We add to our collection every year. I may set up a picnic table with Mickey and Minnie this year, but I have a dilemma...see the last paragraph below. The amount of electrical cords I have (I make most of them) and other support stuff is crazy. I don't count anymore, but I have something around 30k-40k lights up. When we lived in PA, we had 3.5 acres, so I could really spread stuff out...I even used a real car as part of my display one year. Here, I have just under an acre, so I have to be a bit more creative.
Inside our house is similar. Lots of lights in places. Nutcrackers, a full size village, and all sorts of different Christmas stuff in every room. Our family room is just a Christmas wonderland. We raid Michaels, Home Depot, etc...on Dec 26th every year. Last year, we had 8 Christmas trees up in the house. 3 real and 5 fake. There may have been 6 fake, I forget.
Kind of like some people plan Disney year round, I work on my display about 8 or 9 months per year. Mostly programming the songs to dance to music. But I spend some time making props. Set up outside begins Nov 1st and takes something like 60-80 hours total.
So yeah, we go crazy. My kids are still all 13 and under. DS13 of course doesn't believe any more. DS9 doesn't either...but his twin sister still does. We'll probably have to tell her after this year. So for now, we still put stuff under the tree, etc... Even when they're older, I still plan to do presents under the tree with them. How much we spend will depend on the year to year financial situation, but who cares. It's the excitement and family fun of it all that matters to us.
This year, we're going to be in WDW for both Thanksgiving and Xmas, so I'm sort of stressing about what to do with my outdoor display. I usually run it from Black Friday evening until New Years Eve, but we'll be gone a lot of that time. Think I may just do a scaled back version and put a sign out saying "preparing for a big 2018 show" or something.