Today is Christmas. Or secularly, December 25th. Regardless of beliefs, churches, social structures, and power grids, this day of the year motivates (or more importantly allows) people to add a bazillion assorted lights, lawn displays, synchronized musical reviews and production effects rivaling Pink Floyd onto their houses. I think it’s awesome and question the limitation of “super-lighting” to only one holiday or period of the year. Why not go filament crazy 365, baby?
These days, Halloween (the best holiday ever) is now a close 2nd in exterior overdoing it-ness, but beyond Decemberween (the period of time encompassing the entire month of October, the part of November after Thanksgiving, and the entire month of December) there’s nary a fun light to be found. That’s really sad. If people get so excited about crazying up their residences for Decemberween, why not just go year round. You could save yourself a lot of work each year going up and down ladders and potentially shocking yourself when you find out why you can’t daisy chain 14 strings of lights together the hard way.
It’s possible that people might get angry about clashing color schemes in lighting packages. I would personally use my halloween color scheme year round. Some people would probably want to use the Christmas green/red/blue/yellow/white/orange scheme. Some people might just want to rig up their house entirely in purple lights and have a giant Pez dispenser on the lawn. That sounds fun. People love to drive around during the holidays to look at lights. What if you could do that every night? Exciting, exciting, exciting!
Unless you live in a neighborhood run by a gestapo. Yes, the wonderful 4th level of government known as the Home Owners Association. With a ruthless efficiency and armed with lawyers bearing bull whips, the modern American Home Owners Associations can crack down on individual rights to decorate their own private property in a manner that’d make Stalin blush. We’ve all heard stories about veterans being sued by their HOAs for putting up a flag pole in their yard or the families who lost their homes because they didn’t plant the right type of grass in their yard. Some of these groups go to extremes, but almost all of them have restrictions on seasonal lighting. But I guess the HOAs have a valid arguement. Sure, you may have saved your money and worked hard to buy your own piece of the American dream of home ownership, but it’s more important that an entity of strangers tell you what you can and can’t do with your property… all under the guise of protecting the “values” of the neighborhood. A few years ago this was at least restricted to financial values but lately the “values” being maintained are often ones regarding the questionable enforcement of a group’s ethical and moral views as well.
So in order to see my dream of all houses tarted up year round there’d need to be a complete relaxation in the Nazi-esque HOAs of the world. I don’t know if that can happen or not. One can always dream.
I mentioned this idea to someone once before and was countered with the arguement that if houses were lit up year round, it’d remove the “specialness” of the holiday season. That’s silly. It makes as much sense as the “but these go to 11″ arguement. It’s like saying you shouldn’t be nice to people all year so that if you’re considerate for a week at the end of the year, you can consider yourself a better person? Silly. Want to make something special? Escalate it to a special level. Don’t just lower the baseline to make it special by relative comparison.
So it might be a pipe dream to get 12 months of awesomely lit housing and people feeling comfortable about letting other people express themselves, but at the moment Decemberween is a decent compromise. Maybe not decent, but it’s what we’ve got right now.
Best wishes from everyone at PostHumorous. Enjoy the rest of the light up season, be safe and don’t forget to keep things in perspective.
Author’s Note: Yes, I know. This was not a terribly funny post. This was more of holiday posting. But if you want funny, try this:
Not long ago and far away, Santa was getting ready for his annual trip…but there were problems everywhere.
Four of his elves were sick, and the trainee elves did not produce the toys as fast as the regular ones so Santa was beginning to feel the pressure of being behind schedule.
Then Mrs. Claus told Santa that her mom was coming to visit. This stressed Santa even more. When he went to harness the reindeer, he found that three of them were about to give birth and two had jumped the fence and were out, heaven knows where. More Stress. Then when he began to load the sleigh, one of the boards cracked and the toy bag fell to the ground and scattered the toys. So, frustrated, Santa went into the house for a cup of coffee and a shot of whiskey. When he went to the cupboard, he found the elves had hidden the liquor and there was nothing to drink. In his frustration, he dropped the coffee pot and it broke into hundreds of little pieces all over the he kitchen floor.
He went to get the broom and found that mice had eaten the straw it was made from.
Just then the doorbell rang and Santa cussed on his way to the door. He opened the door and there was a little angel with a great big Christmas tree. The angel said: “Where would you like to put this tree Santa?”
And that my friends, is how the little angel came to be on top of the Christmas tree.
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