To clear the air, I haven’t been religious since I was eight years old. I would be an atheist but I don’t have the energy for it. Besides, I feel if you take the time to actually have a belief system, it’s really not that different than believing in religion.
I digress.
Every year since I can remember I have had Christmas lights up, in and around my house. I have lights up around the inside of the house as well as outside on the balcony. This year I think the actual total of individual lights is around 2,300. Also important to know that I live in a condo not a house so the sheer number of lights almost borders on insanity. I don’t give a damn, they’re festive!
Some of my favorite light memories go back to the early 80’s when I had a small studio apartment where I kept the lights up year round. I only had a couple of sets and they framed the living room window. I had an upstairs unit and in somewhat of a place of prominence. If you came over the old railroad bridge from old highway 58 into Barstow, the first thing you would see as you entered that God-forsaken shithole of a town would be twinkling Christmas lights. Sometimes in July. You see, during this particular era I was known to dabble with the hallucinogens. I would start to feel the tingling settle in and I would turn on the Christmas lights without giving a shit about the time of year. There was something magical about having the lights on during this type of event. The colors added a depth to your field of vision, it actually enhanced and added nuance to the music you listened to and added almost a texture to the atmosphere. Awesome stuff. It helped to have the appropriate mood music in place. Usually something like Pink Floyd, Talking Heads, Laurie Anderson, Bauhaus etc.
Now since I haven’t fucked with the stuff since before the start of this millennium I just have the lights up for atmosphere. And of course to show up the neighbors.
The basics: the lights go up on December 1st and come down New Years Day. They are turned on at sunset and are turned off at bed time, none of that overnight shit except maybe on Christmas Eve for the inside lights only. All strings of lights MUST flash, no strings that are just “ON”. Whatever happened to twinkling lights, you know, when each individual light blinked on it’s own schedule?? Remember them? They used to be the shit, now all you can get are flashing strings. The fuck is that?
And finally: (all caps for a reason) MULTI-COLOR LIGHTS ONLY!
I mean, just LOOK at this shit!
Or this! Holy fucking Jesus! Look at this!
What the fuck is that?! “Nope, kids! White is the only color we need!”
That’s fucking racist! Who the fuck doesn’t like more color in life? I’m one of those folks who has a slight colorblind issue with the red/green thing (fuck you NFL for the Jets vs. Bills Thursday Night Color Rush game) and even I wouldn’t use all white. I still see plenty of colors my brain just interprets a couple of them differently. I respect the fact that the folks made the effort to put up their lights but goddammit! They are all the same color. I mean, just, FUCK!
Now here’s a different effort:
I know a few fine “establishments” in rural Nevada where these might be more applicable but it just doesn’t look Christmasy. Maybe for Halloween.
Now these people are getting there:
It’s kind of cool. I mean literally it makes me cold just looking at it. Have you watched the series “Fargo? goddamn I love that show but it makes me cold as fuck just watching it. Now these lights, I get the whole Winter vibe thing but still a little too monochromatic for my taste.
Now compare those to this:
Now that’s some goddamn color right there! Look at these crazy motherfuckers! I bet all of their fucking neighbors hate these excessive assholes! Holy shit, I bet you could get a tan just walking past this fucking display. The colors, though? That’s the shit I’m talking about.
It’s supposed to be a festive time of year. Do solid white lights make you feel festive or make you feel like you’re in a police line-up? Not that I have any experience with that type of thing.
I hope this little diatribe has inspired you. Maybe you’ll string together a few lights, have a nice cocktail and watch the beautiful lights. Or maybe this will encourage you to use multi-color lights from here on. Or maybe this just makes you want to drop acid and listen to Pink Floyd. That’s cool too.
Happy holidays, folks!.
I once dated a woman* (shocking, I know) who had grandparents that, upon meeting me for the first time at their house, show me the “best of the best” of grandma’s Christmas albums. Those “albums” consisted solely of year after year of them driving around their small town – and other small towns nearby – and taking photos of nearly every house with Christmas displays that they could find… because they were just so pretty, so so pretty. Just look at this one! There’s even a little cat there in the corner! AWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!
*I’ve dated other women since, I assure you
Speaker: …The stately 1992 Latura.
Fry: Hey, my girlfriend had one of those! Actually, it wasn’t hers, it was her dad’s. Actually, she wasn’t my girlfriend. She just lived next door and never closed her curtains.
Strange Christmas tale time: after divorcing the former Mrs right I lived in LA and my daughters lived with their mom in San Diego. Every other Friday I would drive down and pick them up for the weekend and take them home on Sunday. Ten fucking years I made this trip every other week.
We alternated holidays so every other year I had the girls for Christmas. One of the off years the girls stayed with me for the week before Christmas, we did the whole thing with the presents and Christmas dinner but I had to take them back to mom on Christmas Eve.
I got back home early on Christmas eve and having celebrated already, I tossed the Christmas tree over my balcony and dragged it to the dumpster. I lived on a kind of busy downtown street and lots of people walked pay this discarded Christmas tree on Christmas eve and I’m sure more than a few of them questioned humanity.
I kept the lights up until New Years Day though.
One year when I lived in Del Mar we had a tree and after Christmas I hauled it into the side yard and forgot all about it until March. Then one night we took it to the fire pits in La Jolla and tossed it on a bonfire. It went up in a brilliant blaze of orange – took no more than ten seconds for the whole thing to burn. It was the best thing ever.
I live walking distance to Dockweiler beach and it turns out that the “burning of the Christmas tree” is kind of a thing. The weekend after New Years you will see a shitload of trees lined up next to the fire rings just waiting for the ritual sacrifice.
It’s really fun to hear all you SoCal DFOers talking about places I’ve only heard of on SNL.
Sounds like the former Mrs Right, for you, was actually quite…..wrong.
I would be an atheist but I don’t have the energy for it. Besides, I feel if you take the time to actually have a belief system, it’s really not that different than believing in religion.
Yeah Right, I like to think of myself as a Secular Humanist. I believe in humanity, in all its wonderfulness and all its terribleness.
That is a beautiful and acceptable ethos.
Thank goodness! If you didn’t believe, humanity would just fade away.
Could you imagine a world without humanity? **shudders**
http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20130920112217/simpsons/images/9/9b/Best-simpsons-gifs-world-without-lawyers.gif
DFO membership would be drastically reduced.
[sigh] I’ll try.
“I would be an atheist but I don’t have the energy for it.”
You don’t have the energy to think about where you are as a human being, to question what others take for granted no matter how illogical or ridiculous, to look at what is known about your surroundings and come to some conclusions based on facts and current knowledge, to view and act ethically based on what is logically inherent in the simple empathy of how you would be treated?
“Besides, I feel if you take the time to actually have a belief system, it’s really not that different than believing in religion.”
Atheism by definition is the lack of belief in a god or gods, that is it; that is not a belief system. It is simply a lack in a belief in what many humans have conjured as a self justification for their existence along with the tribal and separatist nature attributes that behavioral evolution and societal encouragement has afflicted us with to this point. Atheist are as diverse a group as any with an equally diverse point of view; they have ardent beliefs in many cases, but also many conclusions or positions held based on logic and available information as opposed to the metaphysical and mysticism inherent in most religions. Most do have the energy to question the dogma that was foisted on them during childhood and beyond. The energy that is wasted is usually associated with the grief of fighting perceptions such as your statement of self-justification based on a false equivalency.
“I believe in humanity”
What does that even mean? There are ~seven billion humans on this planet with a wide range of behavioral traits that are based on many factors. Why not attempt to understand these instead of rallying around vague platitudes? Just curious.
You’re right Moose, it’s a vague statement. What I believe is that humanity is capable of forming its own morality, ethics, and sense of fairness and what’s right, without any god or religious institution dictating such. I believe that our efforts should be focused on honoring and being good to other people, as opposed to doing things to please some supernatural entity.
I do not mean to imply by any stretch that I am more successful than anyone else at being good to other people, just that it’s something I want to strive for.
I enjoy this kind of dialogue, btw, and have always appreciated that your viewpoints are very well-thought-out.
Baltimore has Miracle on 34th street. It is stupid, ugly, and excessive.
http://live-timely-hdqkcu4r.time.ly/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/hampden-lights.jpg
It’s also packed with tourists, drunk suburbanites, and the actual residents of this particular neighborhood – Hampden – who are accomplished drug addicts (meth/heroin), white trash, and total disasters as human beings.
White lights were the norm in my family, I love colored lights, the wife doesn’t. Fuck it, I drink bourbon and put up lights, but also wrap them in ropes of pine. Also, this year, I suggested we take a lantern we use in the summer and fill it up with lights – and goddamn does it look great (although this is a decorative touch, no homo.)
There’s a tiny street in Portland called Peacock Lane that I think requires its residents to put up big holiday displays every year (like, I think it’s in the HOA bylaws or something). Problem is, it’s just one block off from two major intersections, so traffic gets fucked up around there every year. I’ve walked through it a couple of times and it’s nice enough, but not enough to justify a dedicated traffic cop and all sorts of delays around there.
That said, twinkly lights are great and should stay up until after the spring equinox. We need more light during the dark months.
Is that a reindeer inside a nativity scene?
Holy shit I’m impressed.
House across the street from me has Christmas lights up all year. I don’t know the exact situation over there but it boils down to some, “I can live here while I work on the place for my parents/whoever” loser guy who never works on the place and isn’t even home half the time (probably out doing drugs, am I right fellow property owners?). Anyways, fucking Thanksgiving passes and for the next week a crew of mexican day laborers are over there putting up a masonry wall, cutting back all the landscaping, and hauling whatever trash out of the backyard. I’m talking to the leader (“El Presidente” in spanish) about their work and ask if the lights are coming down. Dude says he offered, as the owner says they don’t even work anymore, and the owner declined.
Now who the fuck leaves their lights up all year? I mean, isn’t that a clear sign of poor/stupid/lazy/inconsiderate/trashy/take-you-pick? Isn’t it just one of those things you don’t do? Chain your dog up outside 24/7; wear a mullet; chew with your mouth open; vote; or leave your lights up 24/7/365 WHEN THEY DON’T EVEN LIGHT UP IN DECEMBER?
My next house is going to be in a gated community. Or Montana.
Also, WHERE’S THE FOOTBALL/DICKS? WHY IS THIS EVEN NEWS?!
Hot taek, bruh.
You asked for it:
http://a.abcnews.go.com/images/US/ht_hawk_house_jc_151203_12x5_1600.jpg
That’s alright. You’ll get yours come mailbag Friday.
Dyker Heights in Brooklyn is insane.
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The whole neighborhood has gotten into a war of mass escalation, it’s like Deck the Halls with Danny Devito, but an entire neighborhood.
They have bus tours of the lights.
http://momitforward.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Brooklyn-Dyker-Heights-Lights.jpg
http://explorebk.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/dyker-heights-christmas-lights-winter-events-brooklyn-nyc.jpg
One more thing to add.
Fake Christmas trees suck.
Especially the white ones.
Sorry for all the pictures, but the neighborhood is wonderfully insane.
Henry Hill would disagree about that fucking white Christmas tree, you fucking hump.
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-CdL6XOvEUDc/UNjJWrb9MJI/AAAAAAAAUK8/CcfPSXYe5w8/s1600/goodfellas+xmas+3.jpg
I don’t think the tree was originally white, there is just so much coke dust in the house it turned that color.
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-E-NWXnDsWk8/T0D3p_PzywI/AAAAAAAAZh0/CbPgonC07qg/s1600/Goodfellas_263Pyxurz.jpg
I agree; white lights are pointless.
We just put lights on the tree, and leave the tree beyond Three Kings Day, and throw it out after the Super Bowl.
One of my favorite memories is one Christmastime when Chicagoland got a bunch of snow before Christmas, my dad had strung a multicolored strand of big fucking lights in our bushes, and they had melted these huge cavities in the snow. The snow kept falling and covered the lights completely, so the bushes had these big balls of glowiness in them.
LEDs don’t get that big, or that hot, so I will never be able to replicate that. And I’m not going all “vinyl records are superior” and finding vintage incandescent lights.
OK, all that said, I’ve got to disagree with one of your main points. I think monochromatic displays are cool. And not only do they look cool, they show commitment to a theme, and dedication. Plus, with multicolored strings, certain colors are Christmas-y: red, green, blue… other colors don’t feel very Christmas-y: yellow, orange, purple. I’ve seen a couple houses nearby that have found strings of lights that are only red, green, and white. One house looks like an elf barfed candy canes all over it. Very cool.
Christmas lights are just cool. The Hindu family next to me puts up Christmas lights. One year I asked my neighbor about it, and he said “Yeah, we’re not Christian, but that doesn’t stop us from enjoying the decorations.” He’s a pretty cool dude. Owns a liquor store, loves football, is relentlessly improving his house–just the type of immigrant Ted Cruz and Donald Trump hates.
Thought just occurred to me. In college, everyone decorated their dorm rooms with Christmas lights after getting back to school after Thanksgiving, right? Then, they like the look of the lights and they’re lazy college kids, so the lights stayed up for most of Spring semester. Maybe that’s why it feels to me like people put so many more lights up now than they did when I was a kid.
“the type of immigrant Ted Cruz and Donald Trump hate” – well played.
Fuck those two guys. As the grandson of immigrants, the current backlash against them is fucking insane and infuriating, cause I’m pretty sure these two halfwits aren’t fucking Native Americans.
You may be the grandson of immigrants but those of us WHO WERE BORN HERE appreciate the Trump wants to make America great again!
(Note: I’m just rooting for Trump because I just want to see what happens.)
That look of the incandescent lights through a blanket of snow is one of the prettiest things I’ve ever seen. /no homo
When I was a kid we had a string of multicolored lights that played carols out of a tiny speaker and blinked along with the carols. You could also have the speaker off, but the lights would still blink along with whatever song was supposed to be playing, which was pretty damn fun. Actually, I’m betting these are still in my parent’s basement, I should look for them.
Other than that, this is my first holiday season in my condo, as opposed to my awful apartment, so I’ve actually bothered to decorate this year, and I’m digging it. I also bought a bunch of tiny, fruit flavored candy canes for my candy dish, but I ate all those in like, 3 days.
There’s a random McMansion on one of the side streets about 2 minutes from our neighborhood, which not only has the full Griswold, but also the entire yard/fences with lights, sleds, Santas, etc.
As I told my kids, classic “more money than sense” and you might as well put out a “please rob me” sign to go with it.
Also, I’m a lazy man with very little manual dexterity.
http://40.media.tumblr.com/831d4be778ac155605086a5c1c3e121e/tumblr_nsdkecvnbL1qfthy3o3_1280.jpg
Hallucinogens in Barstow, huh? You’re not the first person I’ve heard mention that. Careful– that’s bat country out there.
“I was somewhere on the edge of the desert, near Barstow when the drugs began to take affect.”
Yes. YES. Big fat colored lights that blink randomly and burn at 700 Fahrenheit. That’s Christmas. That and these things…
http://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/Hn8AAOxyOlhSsdpK/s-l400.jpg
I have a string of old-style multi-colored twinkling lights in my bedroom window.
Btw, this is one of my favorite scenes in the last couple of years. Festive masturbator indeed.
FUCKING A
I just want to stand up and cheer. I also am quite fond of Christmas lights. I used to put up tons of them in my one-bedroom apartment in LA. Put ’em up Black Friday, take ’em down New Year’s Day. And I am going to give you an AMEN for emphasizing the need for multicolored lights. All white lights is too mannered…it’s like what they put up in the Grove all year round, or at a fancy restaurant. That’s not Christmas. Christmas should look like a paint store blew up. If my lady had her way, the tree would have all white lights. I am not a man who puts his foot down, cause I’m enlightened and shit. But that foot hovers above the ground for multicolored lights.
On a side note, those inflatable lawn Santas and snowmen are a fucking abomination.
I LOATHE The Grove.
I like the fountain, but I’m just a sucker for fountains. Basically The Grove is what I walk through to get to the Farmer’s Market.
Fun fact: my sister in law is a big wig in the company that makes those fountains. They did the Bellagio ones.
White lights suck on their own, but this is pretty badass.
http://www.asliceofbrooklyn.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/christmas-tour-main.jpg
I like driving around and seeing all the blow-up Santas that are under-inflated or leaking air or whatever. I imagine Santa being over-served the night before and ending up the next morning face-first in a pile of his own sick.