And now, for something else to argue about....

While participating in the annual office "deck the halls" fun, I discovered that there is another Christmas issue about which people feel very strongly. (No, it's not the "open-presents-Christmas-eve-vs.-open-presents-Christmas-day" controversy.) It is:

Christmas lights -- tiny white lights vs. colored lights.
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Oh, and btw -- it's tiny white lights only, and NOT blinking on and off. Don't care for the blinking on and off. Twinkling is ok.
AND...presents should be opened on Christmas morning. The other way is just wrong. So wrong. ;)

bah humbug!

:P

I can understand being burned out on the commercialization of Christmas -- but hating CHRISTMAS LIGHTS?

You flush apple pies down the toilet and wash your car with the American flag, don't you?

I think it all just depresses me because I have no family to share it with. And I'm not looking for sympathy. I hate that too!

I like Apple Pie, but I like the flag idea! Maybe we could make American Flag Sham-wows! :P

I don't know if you can see it on this picture, but growing up my grandma had a white aluminium tree that spun around, with a blue, red and green color wheel spotlight sorta thingy aimed at the tree...so no lights on the tree. The tree made us dizzy enough to forget that all Santa brought us every year was a bag of m&ms, a new hand knitted poncho, toothbrush and a training bra and pantie set.
Every frickin' year.

those were pretty cool!


He also had a red/ green light bulb that would blink in the kitchen.

The ones with strands that sort of dangle down? I hate those mostly because of how ugly they look on the house during the day, when it's not dark. I have fairly strong feelings about the way decorations should look during daylight. For example, I hate those blow-up things, because during the day when they're deflated, it just looks like you have a bunch of crap lying in your yard.

At night they still look too busy, IMO.

but they work great for decorating a tree, all those small strands let you place the lights EXACTLY where you want/need them.

:)

That's an excellent suggestion. I may have to buy a strand and check it out.

I lost a couple of strings this year to age, so I'm going to replace them with more icicle lights at the apres-Christmas sales.

Ask 5gan about my supreme nerd cred. Then feel free to grovel for forgiveness.

I have kicked him out of the lounge A/V club.

...have a couch on your front porch? There's a house on my road that has icicle lights, and they have a couch on their front porch.

How cool would that be, to hang out on the porch sofa with a cooler full and the ballgame on AM radio?


Way cool, that's how.

I want to watch the Moon hang low in the sky like a testicle tonight. They say it'll be so close to us, we can reach up and touch it.

And the windows, gutters, etc. Icicles everywhere. If there really were an ice storm, there'd be icicles everywhere, and I'm all about realism.

Bake

The more the better. :)

I'm picturing you in the future, as a very old woman. You'll wear rhinestones, and perhaps animal prints. And your nails will always be bright red, including your toenails. There cannot be enough color in your life.

How far off am I? :)

I do like to paint my fingernails & toenails... including bright red... but I hardly wear any jewelry and the only animal print clothing I have is pajamas. :D

I see leopard-print stretch pants in your future.

I'm thinking of the mom from that Married With Children show. :D


(btw, the pajamas are leopard print)

An off-the-shoulder sweater and red dye-job, and you've got it.

Peg Bundy DEFINITELY had colored Christmas lights. heheehehe

someone would have to drug me!

But that sounds like a good Halloween costume. :)

I put white lights on my outside stairs first then a string or two of colored lights over it. It brightens up the display.

When we had a real tree I would string white lights around the middle (yes I used to get cut up) and then colored ones on the outside.
My mantle and stairs inside we did all white though....
so you should have an "other" or both option!!!!
:*


:hi:


lost

I updated to add "Both or Other." Thanks. :)

It's artificial lighting that keeps us from seeing them.

http://www.upstateastro.org/stars/cssp.html

The image on the upper left of this link is what the sky looks like with no artificial light around. I can personally attest to have seen that myself at that location with the naked eye.

You blow your nose with the flag and eat chili made with kitten meat, don't you?

(I live in the country. I can see the stars from where I live. However, I've also seen the kind of stars you're talking about -- saw the Perseid meteor shower from a campsite along the Colorado River while on a whitewater rafting trip. You're right. Beautiful.)

The only reason it does not look like that photo of the Milky Way every clear, moonless night is because of artificial lighting.

Like Christmas lights. So there. Nyeah. :P

But it is disturbing to see a shoulder shrug over such a big environmental issue. :-(

Take that shit to GD.

:eyes:

;)

...that I wasn't serious when I entitled this post "something else to argue about."

Yeeesh. I'm not saying my house is visible from space. We're not Mr. & Mrs. Chevy Chase. Just a few strands of white lights.

Oh, and there is that searchlight in the front yard that projects an image of Santa into the sky, like the Bat Signal........



(That was a joke. You do have a sense of humor in there somewhere, right?)

It's a bit of a pet issue with me and I'm a bit distracted today.

I got a little snarky in my response. Sorry if you're having a bad day. I understand the environmental issues. But can I please have my Christmas lights if I promise to cut my consumption elsewhere? I'll use the battery-powered vibrator instead of the electric, or something. (That's a rhetorical question. No need to respond.)

It's a pet issue with me, too.

I've tried to get the local council to stop one of the churches in the town where I live from keeping their two giant-assed spotlights on all night long. They're pointed straight up at the sky to light the steeple. I live out near the country, and it's beyond frickin annoying. All the other new businesses have no trouble with hooded, downward-facing lights. Just that one frickin church... :mad:

While everyone else is installing cut-off lighting, the new lights at a big church look like unshaded arc-lights, except they are glaring Mercury vapor bulbs.

shooting the stupid lights out. But that would be wrong. O8)

The Moon will be the closest to Earth in 50 years and the meteor showers are happening at the same time. :bounce: :party: :woohoo:

Of course the weather around here is so bad in the winter I tend to forget about astronomy until April.

we honeymooned in Forest County one time, and that was the darkest sky I had seen for some time.

Other than that, the only time I have ever seen the Milky Way was way out on Cape Hatteras.




maybe there should be a "lights out" night in cities, as opposed to Light Up night!

You with those nekked eyes. I actually agree with you, btw. Real genuine twinkling stars are un-frigging-beatable.

Tall, thin, tapered white candles. In the windows. Smaller candles on the tree and no more than 12. Also, the fire extinguisher goes behind the couch, not in the attic or next to the tree.

....when Daylight Savings Time changes, or just when the low-battery warning beeps?

I test them monthly.

You also get used to never leaving a room empty without extinguishing the candles.

We only have the white lights, but I like the retro/campy feel to the colored ones.

I worked for a guy about ten years ago who had, I kid you not, a rotating aluminum tree, complete with mirrors. That's a little over the top.

Well, it didn't rotate...but it was silver, and it came with one of those rotating multi-colored light things that shone on it and changed the colors. My father thought it was the bomb, and my mother HATED it.

I got the fresh-greenery-tiny-white-lights aesthetic from her, I think.

But 1995? His wife had a Marge Simpson-like hair do; I swear the thing was a foot tall and blue-gray. He had a comb-over. They had a karaoke machine and were militant about making people sing. They were white trash heaven.

So, are these big bulbs accompanied by tinsel-hung-one-strand-at-a-time? My guess is yes. Or that big fat tinsel garland?

Grandma used to do a garland. With enough reflective bulbs, there is no need for tinsel IMHO

myself, I'm from a tinsel family - discreet, but tinsel just the same!

In my area, it seems like some of the people who use only white lights (and also usually a single electric candle in each visible window) are the middle class "better than thou" types who do it in order to make themselves as different as humanly possible from the poor people around here. I have literally *heard* these types of people in conversation while picking out lights..."Oh no, don't get the colored ones! Do you want to look like some tacky trailer park or something??" I have heard this sentiment expressed more than once. The elitist snobbery implied is unbelievably hurtful and insulting, especially considering that my family is poor and we *do* live in a trailer park and use colored lights.

Do I think that ALL people who prefer white lights to colored lights are elitist snobs? Of course not. But I'd be lying if I said that attitudes like this have not affected my own perception about white lights. It's not entirely fair, because people cannot be stereotyped like that, but I admit to feeling a twinge of suspicion and vague resentment when I pass a home with nothing but white Christmas lights, unless it's the home of someone that I *know* is not that kind of person.

However, as is the case with the first respondent, I could do without the lights altogether.

Locking: Flame Bait will not be tolerated...


:evilgrin:

Yikes. Seriously, I had no idea that Christmas lights were controversial.

Were you not here during the Great Christmas Light Fiasco Flame Flest of 2002? Trolls unmasked, divorces requested and granted, whirled peas, it was higgedly-piggedly I tell ya! It was moider!


Ok-- weekend's officially here, desk is getting locked and pens placed in cups-- stay outta trouble and have a great weekend!

But then I put two strobe lights out as well, and angle them so that when you are a a few houses away the strobe light hits you right in the eye.

Just hook 'em over the edge of the gutter, and you're all set.

Handy. ;)

it is a pain in the ass painting all the curls in the bulb.

I'm near Mexico so I feel the influence of the love for lots of color, but I also like the way the small white lights look. So...Front door gets framed by a twist of silver tinsel garland and a doubled set of white lights. Two windows facing front get framed (inside) with small colored. both peaks and one side of roof get old style big colored lights, tree gets small colored and then somebody gave me a strand of those icecycle whites and they actuall look ok along one porch.

I can't find anybody brave enough to climb the wobly old windmill or we would do something there too. I love christmas lights. I break them out in the summer for parties too.

my mom did all white lights 20 plus years ago when it was unusual - but now it just looks bland - JMO I don't like the icicle or those lights that are all in square rows, either.


all red, all green, or all blue look pretty to me...

I think that's beautiful.

Actually, I can also go with all red or all green -- but blue is my favorite. I just don't care for multi-colored.

elegant and trashy. Give me the biggest hugh colored lights any day of the week, but damn, I also like the tiny elegant white lights. There is a purpose for them; to pale in comparison to big, bold, beautiful, trashy assed colored lights.

What can I say? I like my Christmas lights like I like my women. :evilgrin:

And a big fucking Santa robot slowing waving "Ho-ho-ho" up on the roof with his feet duct-taped to the shingles.