|
Source: (consider it)
|
Thread: Christmas lights - bah humbug
|
St. Gwladys
Shipmate
# 14504
|
Posted
The first Christmas lights in our street went up the week after bonfire night. Last night, we saw another two houses with their lights up - a flashing starand a santa seesaw -yuch!
--------------------
"I say - are you a matelot?"
"Careful what you say sir, we're on board ship here"
From "New York Girls", Steeleye Span, Commoners Crown (Voiced by Peter Sellers)
Posts: 3333 | From: Rhymney Valley, South Wales | Registered: Jan 2009
| IP: Logged
|
|
Og, King of Bashan
Ship's giant Amorite
# 9562
|
Posted
Nothing in my neighborhood yet, although a number of houses still have pumpkins rotting on the front steps from Halloween. A week from today is when most people will get going on their outdoor lights in the States.
--------------------
"I like to eat crawfish and drink beer. That's despair?" ― Walker Percy
Posts: 3259 | From: Denver, Colorado, USA | Registered: May 2005
| IP: Logged
|
|
Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
|
Posted
Nothing so gaudy in this douce and respectable part of Embra. But there are one or two houses deck a mature tree in their garden with tiny white fairy lights - though I think up the road cut loose last year with ice blue. I rather like the effect.
Posts: 17302 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Jun 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
nickel
Shipmate
# 8363
|
Posted
No lights yet, but I enjoy letting our Halloween pumpkins shrivel up and rot in the front flower bed. They get so much more character as they age, maybe we should start carving them on Oct 1st instead of Oct 31st!
Posts: 547 | From: Virginia USA | Registered: Aug 2004
| IP: Logged
|
|
Twilight
Puddleglum's sister
# 2832
|
Posted
Nothing on my street yet, but the day after Thanksgiving, the man two doors down and across and I will be engaged in our annual unspoken competition. I use many multicolored lights because it's my belief that 'tis the season to be gaudy.
Posts: 6817 | Registered: May 2002
| IP: Logged
|
|
Graven Image
Shipmate
# 8755
|
Posted
No lights in our area. Many people put them up the day after Thanksgiving.
Posts: 2641 | From: Third planet from the sun. USA | Registered: Nov 2004
| IP: Logged
|
|
no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
|
Posted
Seven strings of LED lights on the house. We put them up usually on Canadian Thanksgiving weekend, which is the second Monday in October. But we don't plug them in until after 11 Nov.
We have to put them up in October, because today, overnight it was -32°C (-26°F) and that's too cold for my hands to enjoy doing it. With the darkness coming at 4 pm and sunrise something around 9 am, it is happy to see some glowing lights when I arrive from my 12 km commute on my bicycle.
--------------------
Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.
\_(ツ)_/
Posts: 11498 | From: Treaty 6 territory in the nonexistant Province of Buffalo, Canada ↄ⃝' | Registered: Mar 2010
| IP: Logged
|
|
Uncle Pete
Loyaute me lie
# 10422
|
Posted
Never bother with them myself, and tend to spit when I see any lit before Advent IV (December 22 this year)
I will be in India for Christmas this year, and the locals have lights left on their houses from Diwali.
It doesn't bother me too much, as it is downright handy when returning from a walk after dark. And I don't have to put up with crass over-marketing or Muzak.
--------------------
Even more so than I was before
Posts: 20466 | From: No longer where I was | Registered: Sep 2005
| IP: Logged
|
|
Sioni Sais
Shipmate
# 5713
|
Posted
The first Christmas lights in Newport were seen before Hallowe'en! I didn't believe it at first so I made a detour on the way home the next night to be sure. OK, they were only red, green & yellow flashing lights round the hall window but they weren't there before and they haven't come down since.
I'll let them off though: they weren't nasty, cold blue lights, which have no place at Christmas.
--------------------
"He isn't Doctor Who, he's The Doctor"
(Paul Sinha, BBC)
Posts: 24276 | From: Newport, Wales | Registered: Apr 2004
| IP: Logged
|
|
Piglet
Islander
# 11803
|
Posted
I'm not sure that I mind the "cold blue" lights, especially if they're outdoors. Lining the roads round the University here, every tree and shrub will be decorated with those "dark" red, blue and green (LED?) lights and the effect is really pretty.
We've never done the outside light thing; I don't think we have an outside socket, and the only colour permitted chez Piglet is white. Candle-bridges in the windows from the start of Advent and Christmas tree and staircase decorations any time after D's birthday (10th December).
[ 23. November 2013, 02:01: Message edited by: piglet ]
--------------------
I may not be on an island any more, but I'm still an islander.
alto n a soprano who can read music
Posts: 20272 | From: Fredericton, NB, on a rather larger piece of rock | Registered: Sep 2006
| IP: Logged
|
|
Moo
Ship's tough old bird
# 107
|
Posted
My Christmas lights consist of plug-in 'candles' on the windowsill that automatically go on when it's dark and go off when it's light.
Aside from creating a pretty effect, it only takes twenty minutes to put them all in place.
Moo
--------------------
Kerygmania host
---------------------
See you later, alligator.
Posts: 20365 | From: Alleghany Mountains of Virginia | Registered: May 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
BessLane
Shipmate
# 15176
|
Posted
In proper redneck fashion, we do have a string of christmas lights which stay up on the front porch of our double-wide all year long. These are a left-over from the previous wife and since a) they're never turned on and b) we never use the front door, they shall most likely remain there until the second coming. That is the sum total of our christmas decorations.
There is a boy in town who is big into christmas decorations. He's got something upwards of 40 trees that he displays both inside and outside his house. Makes me very glad I don't live next door to him.
--------------------
It's all on me and I won't tell it.
formerly BessHiggs
Posts: 1388 | From: Yorkville, TN | Registered: Sep 2009
| IP: Logged
|
|
L'organist
Shipmate
# 17338
|
Posted
Until I moved to the present house I was anti any outside Christmas display other than a tree with lights.
But then our neighbour (Scrooge's spiritual twin) went on and on about the "vulgarity" of a house further up the road - turned out they had an electric candle bridge in the window behind their curtains so it could be seen from the road! Shock, horror & scandal.
So it was fortuitous that an older Godbrother of the children gave them a set of 120 outdoor lights.
Now, we have: coloured light ropes, some on flicker setting, others on all the time, which go up the front wall to the roof and along the top of the garden wall; a massive snowflake; Happy Christmas (in Welsh) with 2 father Christmases; and a set of eaves-level green icicle lights.
And there's more excess inside... ![[Yipee]](graemlins/spin.gif)
--------------------
Rara temporum felicitate ubi sentire quae velis et quae sentias dicere licet
Posts: 4950 | From: somewhere in England... | Registered: Sep 2012
| IP: Logged
|
|
Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
|
Posted
I think Christmas lights are fun. I just wonder how some of the people with the really ornate displays (like the animated Santa getting off his sleigh and climbing down the chimney, done in lights, plus a whole bunch of other things) manage their electricity bills.
Posts: 25445 | Registered: May 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
art dunce
Shipmate
# 9258
|
Posted
We do luminarias on Christmas Eve. I hope to do at least 100 this year.
--------------------
Ego is not your amigo.
Posts: 1283 | From: in the studio | Registered: Apr 2005
| IP: Logged
|
|
cattyish
Wuss in Boots
# 7829
|
Posted
I shall bring in the potted tree which I bought for a tenner six years ago when it feels Christmassy enough- probably about the 12th of December. It'll get a few fairy lights. The neighbours behind us might see it from their upstairs.
Most of my neighbours will start the draping of dangly LED strings from the beginning of December. It looks cheery to me.
Meanwhile in Aberdeen there will be massive lit displays in gardens throughout one particular area and children will be taken round to see them in minibuses.
Cattyish, too cheap to pay for all that power.
--------------------
...to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived, this is to have succeeded.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Posts: 1794 | From: Scotland | Registered: Jul 2004
| IP: Logged
|
|
Lyda*Rose
Ship's broken porthole
# 4544
|
Posted
A local landmark, the Mission Inn, covers it for most of us: like this, this, and this.
Me, I might put an LED snowflake in my window.
--------------------
"Dear God, whose name I do not know - thank you for my life. I forgot how BIG... thank you. Thank you for my life." ~from Joe Vs the Volcano
Posts: 21377 | From: CA | Registered: May 2003
| IP: Logged
|
|
Piglet
Islander
# 11803
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by L'organist:
... they had an electric candle bridge in the window behind their curtains so it could be seen from the road ...
There's not much point in putting them up if they can't be seen from the road. I just don't close the curtains.
--------------------
I may not be on an island any more, but I'm still an islander.
alto n a soprano who can read music
Posts: 20272 | From: Fredericton, NB, on a rather larger piece of rock | Registered: Sep 2006
| IP: Logged
|
|
Carex
Shipmate
# 9643
|
Posted
As I was jogging through the neighborhood today I saw the first of the lights going up. We have recently moved, and the neighbors on either side of use talked about how they compete with each other in their displays. We'll see how that plays out this year.
So now we're debating what to do. One thought is something simple and dramatic - and even better if it celebrates some other holiday or tradition. Perhaps a dove of peace, or spelling out "Merry Christmas" in Sanskrit, or a note that we donated our decoration budget for disaster relief...
Posts: 1425 | Registered: Jun 2005
| IP: Logged
|
|
Printer-friendly view
