Trying to out decorate your neighbors is a time-honored Christmas tradition. But if you just can't top your neighbor's light display, then consider constructing a ridiculously overcomplicated way of turning your Christmas lights on. Follow the lead of Latvian company Scandiweb and build an elaborate Rube Goldberg machine to turn your holiday decor from magical to amazingly absurd.
According to David Grossman for Popular Mechanics: "Rube Goldberg may lend his name to crazy contraptions, but he wasn't the only one to ever build them. Deliberately over-engineered machines for simple tasks is a concept that appears in a number of cultures ranging from the children's stories of India's Sukumar Ray to Denmark's Robert Storm Petersen. Now Latvia is on the scene with the world's longest ever.
The machine took two months to build, funded by Latvian company Scandiweb. Using 412 individual parts, which include a fan and a coffee maker, it takes ten minutes to run through all the steps to turn on the lights of a Christmas tree. The event was certified by the Guinness Book of World Records adjudicator Seyda Subasi Gemici, who observed from beginning to finish."
