This is what the display looks like in fairly subdued light - the LEDs are starting to become quite dominant. What this photo doesn't show you is the movement - sled runners, reins and trails chasing, legs moving back and forth and of course, Rudolph's red nose flashing away merrily.

Just in case you’re thinking this is one of those tiny little displays published previously, think again. At well over a metre wide and just on a metre high, it’s as big as we could make it and still be reasonably easy to transport.

It’s big enough to be seen not just from the footpath, not just from the street, not just from a block or so away but would you believe across a suburb? (Well OK, you do need line-of-sight).

And if this is not even big enough for you, it could easily be scaled up to be a real whopper – if you could find a piece of backing board big enough, you could make it metres high and deep. But more on that anon.

Chevvy Chase, eat your heart out. Your "National Lampoon Christmas Vacation" house didn’t have one of these. Not even the McCallister home in "Home Alone" could manage one. In fact, you can bet your last dollar that your place will be unique – no-one else in the world will build one exactly the same as yours!

Apart from the size, this project has a couple of other very snazzy features which we’ll tell you about before we get down to the nitty gritty (which of course you want to do!).

First of all, the circuit design borders on genius. As you know, John Clarke comes up with some pretty clever projects in SILICON CHIP but he’s really excelled himself this time. He’s managed to keep the circuit amazingly simple while appearing to be quite complex.

For a start, none of the LEDs in this project run from pure DC. As you no doubt know, LEDs need to run from DC – but here they either run from rectified (but unfiltered) low voltage DC or, in many cases, from low voltage AC alone.

What this means to you is a significantly lower cost of components and, more importantly, lower heat problems than we might otherwise expect.

The whole project runs from a 12V "halogen" transformer which is rated at 5.25A continuous. Current drain of our display was around the 1.7A mark, depending on the number of LEDs lit at the time, so the transformer is operating well within its specs.