Low Light - Christmas Lights/Celebrations Camera?

What you are after is really a flash based response.  Can I suggest you investigate manual flash.

With a hot shoe flash you can set the camera to a manual exposure that takes in as much ambient light as possible witout blurring motion. Then fill in with heavily muted flash.

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The FZ50: DSLR handling of a bright Leica 35-420mm lens that's this good: http://www.flickr.com/groups/panasonicfz50/pool/show (some real gems in there). With the FZ200 performance so good, I live in hope that Mr Ichiro Kitao has triggered the update to the FZ50. Our desire for IQ was taking us in the wrong direction. http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1033&message=42366095