There’s a whole spectrum—pun very much intended—of holiday lights decorating houses. As a kid I loved brightly decorated houses and begged my parents to get lights for our house. My father finally did and we put strings of red, white, green, and blue bulbs around the holly trees at either end of the house. And that’s when I realized outdoor Christmas lights aren’t that exciting because I spent most of the time inside the house and couldn’t see them. We also lived on a cul-de-sac so the only people who ever saw them were our neighbors and the exceptionally rare person who took a wrong turn after dark.
Some houses, mainly the more expensive ones, use strings of solid white lights, which I think is really dull. Whatever holiday you’re celebrating should be celebrated with festive colors. Plain white lights are for any time of the year and belong inside the house. They’re for your kitchen, your bathroom, and the attic or basement where you store your holiday decorations for at least ten months of the year. (Don’t get me started on people who start putting up Christmas kitsch in September.)
A few houses are decked out with solid blue lights, though, and I like the simple, cool austerity. Here we rarely get snow, even at Christmas, and there’s something about the solid blue that, to me, evokes polar landscapes. Maybe it also brings back some childhood memories. My mother baked a wide range of holiday cookies but one of my favorites were simple star-shaped sugar cookies blue with food color, each one with a sugary silver ball—they’re called dragées—in the center. My grandparents also had a solid white Christmas tree they put in their living room. They strung it with multi-colored lights and plastic icicles, but it was the blue lights that stood out most to me.
As beautiful as I think they can be, though, I wish the tree in the front window had some color. The holidays should be festive—white lights on your tree are for any time of year.
When I was a kid, one out family’s favourite things was to drive around local neighborhoods and look at the Christmas lights. We don’t put up a lot ourselves but every year there’s a competition in town for best display and Ken is usually a judge! So much fun!
My wife and I used to fill travel mugs with hot chocolate and drive around different neighborhoods looking at Christmas lights. It really is a lot of fun. Every once in a while ypu find a house that’s, well, overdone it slightly. I remember one house that had at least three Santas, one in a sleigh on the roof with lit-up reindeer, and a Nativity scene and snowmen and…well, more than one Santa is already overdoing it.
My wife and I have blue led illumination under our bed. Blue is our favorite color. We also have a favorite planet (Saturn), as well as a favorite dinosaur (Stegosaurus).
I also agree that white lights are boring, especially on a Christmas tree. I much prefer multi-colored lights, ideally LED.
Thomas Slatin recently posted…It’s Nearly 4 AM
Blue is a wonderful color that comes in so many shades. I’m more intrigued, though, that you and your wife have a favorite planet and that it happens to be Saturn. That’s an excellent choice–Saturn is an amazing planet in so many ways. The Stegosaurus is also an excellent choice. I’ve never thought about having a favorite dinosaur of my own but the Stegosaurus would be up there, if only for having a body part named from a Far Side cartoon.
I’m a lot less blue after reading this colorful post, my friend.
ANN J KOPLOW recently posted…Day 4371: That time of the year
It’s funny to me that the Hanukkah Bear is usually blue, which I should have thought to mention earlier. Boy, my face is red now.