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Download a Free Trial Copy Pay for Holiday Lights Send a Friend a Trial Copy Send a Prepaid Gift Copy Free Add-On Bulbs Free Background Pictures Free Extra Music Get Technical Support Windows Version History Mac Version History

About Holiday Lights

Holiday Lights strings rows of Christmas tree bulbs around the edges of your screen, with festive music playing in the background. It even includes a screen saver with gently falling snow and other seasonal choices to put you in the holiday spirit.

If you wish, the colorful lights can flash on your desktop while you continue to work, so it's not just a screen saver. Choose from more than forty different bulbs for any season, including standard Christmas tree lights, chili peppers, stockings, holly, snowmen, happy faces, Valentine's Day hearts, Thanksgiving turkeys, Halloween Jack-O-Lanterns, Hannukah dreidles and menorahs, and more.

Is it useful? Well, no. Is it really cool? Absolutely!

The program is shareware, so you can try it free of charge and pay the $19.95 one-time shareware fee only if you decide to keep it.

Holiday Lights is available for Windows and Mac OS Classic; it works with Windows 95/98/NT4/Me/2000/XP, as well as Mac System 7, Mac OS 8 and Mac OS 9. (This version of Holiday Lights is not compatible with Mac OS X; Mac OS X users should check out MacLampsX, a program that displays bulbs just like Holiday Lights.)

 
What Does it Look Like?

The pictures at the top of this page show some of the ways you could arrange the bulbs. The top two pictures show the screen saver; in real life, of course, the screen saver choices are animated. The bottom pictures show Holiday Lights in action even when the screen saver isn't going.

There are forty different bulbs to choose from (and you can add hundreds more) — you can mix and match them however you want. Want to see Christmas Trees, Valentine's Hearts, and scary Halloween pumpkins at the same time? No problem!

You create the bulb patterns around the edges of your screen by simply clicking and dragging bulbs in the Holiday Lights Bulb Factory, as shown in the picture to the right.

 
Download a Free Trial Copy

Holiday Lights is available for most desktop computers.

	The Windows version requires a computer running Windows 95/98/NT4/Me/2000/XP. A MIDI-capable sound card is required for background music.
	The Macintosh version requires a color Macintosh running System 7 or later, including Mac OS 8 and Mac OS 9 (not Mac OS X). QuickTime is required for background music. Holiday Lights for Macintosh is an application program — not a system extension — so it can't cause extension conflicts.

Visit our Download Center to get your free trial copy now!

Because Holiday Lights is shareware, you can download it right now and try it at no charge. If you don't like it, just throw away the folder (with the Mac version) or uninstall it (on Windows — an uninstaller is included). If you decide to keep using it after ten days, we ask that you support our small company and buy it from us by paying the $19.95 one-time shareware fee.

 
Free Add-On Bulbs

You can check out our Add-On Bulbs page for extra Mac and Windows bulbs — and if you've created your own bulbs, don't forget to send them to us so we can put them on our site!

 
Free Screen Saver Background Pictures

We also offer free additional screen saver background pictures. You must be using Holiday Lights version 5.2 or later on Windows, or version 5.0 and later on the Mac. Just click to download the extra pictures:

• Valentine's Day Picture Pack (8 pictures) for Windows (333K) or Macintosh (487K)
• St. Patrick's Day Picture Pack (9 pictures) for Windows (236K) or Macintosh (361K)
• Easter Picture Pack (9 pictures) for Windows (294K) or Macintosh (444K)
• Winter Picture Pack (11 pictures) for Windows (880K) or Macintosh (1174K)
• Thanksgiving Picture Pack (15 pictures) for Windows (714K) or Macintosh (860K)
• Halloween Picture Pack (7 pictures) for Windows (835K) or Macintosh (909K)

 
Free Add-On Music

Want more music? Holiday Lights already includes many seasonal songs, but you can easily add any MIDI tune. Duane Peltier has a great collection of Christmas songs for Holiday Lights and other programs, ready to go.

Yahoo has a list of many Web sites offering free Christmas MIDI files, as well as classical and jazz files. Yahoo also has a more general list of all MIDI-related sites.

Diversified Software Research offers a collection of songs ranging from "Hail to the Chief" to "Old MacDonald Had a Farm".

For Halloween MIDI files, take a look at The Canvaswerks Spooky Halloween MIDI Page and Derek's Haunted MIDI Archive for a nice collection.

Just download any MIDI file from one of these sites and put it in your Holiday Lights Music Files folder (or use the "Add MIDI Song" button in the Windows version of Holiday Lights). If you need a quick tutorial on downloading MIDI files, see our MIDI downloading help pages for Macintosh or Windows.

Finally, if you're looking for other fun holiday programs, check out our own www.holidaysoftware.com for nearly twenty more!

 
Holiday Lights Gifts

Thinking about ordering Holiday Lights? Know somebody else who would love a copy, too? Use our gift ordering page to send Holiday Lights to your favorite people for 50% off the normal price.

That's right — you can send someone a copy of Holiday Lights for just $9.95, and it's delivered instantly.

 
Awards and Reviews

Lots of people like Holiday Lights — even the experts. With all these five-mouse and five-cow ratings, it's like a zoo around here!

• SoftSeek chose Holiday Lights for Windows as an editor's top pick.
• Tucows gave us a perfect five-cow rating.
• ZDNet gave us a perfect five-star rating.
• MacAddict magazine rated Holiday Lights among the top 40 shareware programs of all time.
• MacUser Magazine awarded us a perfect five-mouse rating.
• Holiday Lights is the winner of an America Online Shareware Award honoring the best programs of the year.
• Simtel's Doctor File Finder recommends Holiday Lights as "a complete holiday package".