I feel like a curmudgeon this year because our house is one of only two or three on our cul-de-sac that does not have Christmas lights on the front of the house. I like driving through the neighborhood and seeing all the lights, but I don’t want the effort (or expense—we could hire someone to put them up for us) of dealing with lights on my own house.
We do have two lit artificial trees on our screened porch. When I bought them, I envisioned putting them in our front yard. But then I realized my husband and I could not enjoy them if they were in the front, so I put them up on the screened porch where we can watch them twinkle through our great room windows.
And, of course, we light our Christmas tree inside. Those lights, too, are visible for us to enjoy.
I guess I’m only a curmudgeon when it comes to sharing my Christmas lights. If I can’t enjoy them, why should I bother putting them up? I’ll stick to the lights I can see.
I must admit, however, that we have generally been curmudgeonly with Christmas lights. At our old house, where we lived for 35 years, only rarely did my husband put lights in our front yard. A few years, he wrapped the front porch in fresh evergreen boughs. A few years, he put blankets of lights on the shrubs in front. But most years, we decorated only with a holiday wreath on the front door.
We have always had real Christmas trees (Fraser firs in recent years), and we have always had lights on our Christmas tree (except for the few seasons we had no tree because we were traveling). Though in 2015, when our daughter’s dog Langley was visiting, we had to keep the lights off because she wanted to attack them.
But no tinsel. My mother liked tinsel, and my parents usually had tinsel on the tree. She was very picky about how it was put on the tree, and it wasn’t until I was a teenager that I was permitted to help her. I thought it was too garish, and it isn’t environmentally sound, so we have stuck with (mostly) Hallmark ornaments and lights.
Do you put Christmas lights up outdoors? Do you have a real or artificial Christmas tree?
I do like Christmas lights. I have some inside and out and I just purchased more that are solar-lit. I’ll put those out today. Yes, I’m a little bit behind, but there was the frenzy of buying, wrapping, and sending Christmas gifts. I always leave the lights up until New Year’s Day, so there is still some enjoyment to be had.
As a hardcore “real” tree guy, for 3+ decades I played lumberjack-for-a-day, driving up to Skyline Drive (in the hills between the San Francisco Bay Area and the Pacific) wife and kids in tow trudging through a tree farm looking for the best ~9 foot tree which for some reason was never near where we parked. Sometimes that tree was very heavy with a really thick trunk. Transporting it to and then thrusting that heavy beast to the top of our 6-1/2 foot SUV was sometimes a real challenge. Later, in our last few years in California we found local tree lots with trees that seemed to look better than what we could find in the hills…
We relocated to Texas and in our first Xmas season we were very late getting a tree, the lots were closed or practically empty of what we needed so we opted for an emergency run to Home Depot to select from left-over artificial trees and found a 7-footer. It turns out this made for an easier, cleaner installation and take-down and laziness convinced us to stick with artificial. My slide had begun.
This year we needed a new tree because the dog had chewed through the light controller and I had already repaired it a couple of times. We wanted a tall tree for our entry. My [Fall from Christmas grace? Total humiliation? Failure to keep to my principles?] is now complete: I shudder to admit that we hired a service to set up the tree and decorate it. In my (very weak) defense, the decorated tree is nearly 11 feet tall and I don’t trust myself on tall ladders anymore. Anyway, I suppose what’s done is done.
Myron, your comment made me laugh. A 9-foot tree is pretty big to be wrestling out of the woods and onto a car. Were the kids big enough to help? Ours (recently from Home Depot) are usually 6-7 feet., even though we now have a 12-foot ceiling in the room where we put it. But we have never had to hire anyone to put it up. If we move to an artificial tree, it will be a small one, nowhere near 11 feet.
Happy New Year,
Theresa
My lumberjack career spanned “pre-kids” to “off to college” years. Yes, they were old enough to help during their adolescence.
We had a 9 foot ceiling in our house in Cupertino so the 9 foot specification allowed for some trimming while still having around 8 feet and room for a “topper.”
“had to hire” someone to put it up is an overstatement, I could have got off my ___ and got it set up and decorated. In fact, I missed decorating a tree ourselves, going through years of collected ornaments including but not limited to Thomas the Tank Engine, Harry Potter, and many other kid-related ornaments, as well as remembering years when the kids didn’t really like decorating the tree but were “good sports” to their doting parents. I think we might do a tree ourselves next year; we’ll see.