So how many of you are still displaying Christmas (holiday, winter solstice, etc.) lights? Our winters are long and dreary, so there is a tendency in this area to display outside lights until sometime in March. Even the municipal lights in our village are still on display. Mine are still up. Our real Christmas tree is down, but the small artificial one in the den is still up. During the Christmas holidays I burn our outside lights every night for a few hours, but this time of year I save them for special occasions or particularly nasty weather. Tom
Nope, UK tradition holds that it is bad luck to still have your christmas decorations up after the Twelfth day of christmas.
We just (within the last three weeks) got an outside electrical outlet (including outlets in the garage for plugging in future PHEVs), so for the first time we will be able to have outdoor lights! Just wait until next December!!! Jim
Mine are still up. And they will be until the snow melts and it's warm enough to remove them without getting frostbite As for turning them on... they're on an automatic light-sensitive timer, so i never really think about it.
When my wife and I got married I bought 20 boxes of lights the day after Christmas for about a buck each with the intention of going all out the following year. The next year came and I took a look at the lights. 20 strands x 75 watts per strand. That is 1.5 kilowatts of electricity. Family tradition is to put up the lights on Thanksgiving and run light them for the month of December. That is 186 KWh of electricity! Christmas lights alone would negate our switch from incandescent lights to CFL. So no lights for us.
You make a very good point... this is the first year i've done lights (also the first winter i've lived someplace i own), so i bought all LED lights. Brighter, whiter, and they use a small fraction of the energy of a normal strand. Until you buy/see LED Christmas lights up on a house, you don't really notice how yellow normal "white" lights are.
I have thought about LED lights but really we aren't home for Christmas anyway. We have not spent a single Christmas at home since we've been married. About 3 years ago we gave our Christmas tree to my sister-in-law. For the past 3 years our holiday decorations have been limited to a wreath on our front door.
I didn't bother w/ lights this year as we were in the midst of having our 3rd child around then, and I didn't take the time to replace the rest of my incandescent lights (80%) w/ LED strings this year. My folks put my artificial, LED lit tree up while I was gone, and sadly, it still sits undecorated in my living room. Perhaps this weekend it'll get put back in it's sack. ;-)
Yeah, the fake Christmas tree is still up in the living room. I did get ride of the "real" wreath hanging on the fireplace face (yesterday), and one of these days I'll take the tree down. I keep it and the ornaments in the garage & it's too cold to get the boxes out right now. Maybe if we get a mild day in the next week or so. I haven't turned the lights on in a week, so maybe no one will notice it's still there. . . .
Nope, my lights, tree, etc., are put up in the attic. We are blessed to not have "weather issues" that hamper all that...... Now it's time to put up the Mardi Gras decorations. Yep, I put up a Mardi Gras tree.........
Ours are down but we have a neighbor who goes all out when decorating his abode. He uses lots and lots of those inflatable Santas, Rudolphs, Snowmen, etc. He's not packed the inflatables away, nor does he fill them up any longer. They lay out on his lawn, deflated, looking like multi-colored puddles of jell-o!!!
I never do decorative lights. But then I don't celebrate any of the winter holidays, either. I do feel sad that Christians have turned the nativity of Jesus, who advocated selflessness, into an orgy of greed.
Maybe that's the reason I decided not to go all out this year. I'm not religious, and Christmas has turned into a commercialized means of balancing the books at the end of the year. Then again, I work for a company in Retail, so I shouldn't complain too loudly.
Nope, put away. I have them up from the weekend after Thanksgiving through the weekend after New Year's. I did finally switch to all LEDs.
I just might get motivated enough to take the evergreen swag with the red bow off the mailbox this week. I keep forgetting to take a pair of scissors or wire cutters with me when I get the mail.
Most of the snow is gone now, so our lights are down. I even have them put away. Sometimes that doesn't happen. When I realize that the lights are still in bags waiting to be put away, but it's almost time to put them back up, I realize that another year has mysteriously slipped away. Tom
Finally got mine down last week. Between less than desireable weather and convalescing from shoulder surgery it took me quite a while...much to my wife's chagrin.
It's never too late. As for us, we almost have leaves on the trees. I can see a few buds, and a tiny bit of color here and there. Tom
My Jeff Foxworthy daily calendar a couple of weeks ago said "You Might Be A Redneck If...your kids trip over Christmas lights looking for Easter eggs." ound: Personally we don't participate (energy use, commercialism, "plastic" urban culture - many reasons, really).
