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Christmas Lights
My wife and I have a yearly holiday disagreement: boring white lights or beautiful colored lights? As our woefully artificial tree is pre-lit with white lights (and I’m disinclined to get a new one) the argument is largely intellectual. Still, I gaze in wonderment and amazedness at the lovely colors of the Christmas tree across the street in the neighbors’ window.
White Lights
Pros:
- Matches everything
- Supposedly elegant
- Safe choice
- The mayonnaise of holiday décor
- Can be used other times of year to decorate your dorm room
Cons:
- Boooooring!
- Colonialist and non-woke
- Wife’s choice, not mine
- Reminds you of your dorm room
Colored Lights
Pros:
- Magical
- Nostalgic – the bigger the better. I’d hang colored floodlights on my tree if I could.
- Diverse!
- The Sriracha of holiday décor
Cons:
- Not sure if I should call them “colored lights” or “lights of color”
- Hipsters are claiming them for themselves, and they are mine
- I want to spell it “coloured” and that’s pretentious
- I gaze at them too lovingly and my wife gets jealous
White lights or lights of colour? You tell me in the comments. And then I’ll judge you.
Published in General
People will think it’s Dawali.
Colored lights always seem more festive. I leave my colored lights up all year over my windows in the sunroom so I can light them up on the Fourth of July. I have a few fake trees – small (3-4 ft) ones. One is red – that looks great with white lights, one is white/silver with blue lights, and one is green with colored lights. I usually alternate them. One of these years I will put them all on display together and see which one I like best.
We have a white light artificial tree but this year my husband added two strings of colored lights bought from Amaon. It looks lovely.
I had heteronormative lights one year but the HOA made me take them down because of children.
As long as the lights twinkle I can go with white or color. I guess I can give colored lights a small edge. But they should twinkle!
The future is programmable RGB lighting. The technology is almost there for tastes. I run them all around my house and the light them up appropriately for each holiday.
What do the neighbors think of that?
What still works as you said, is key! Of course, this little pre-lit tree with white lights worked fine for a week and it was all decorated, then the bottom half went out! They are tightly wrapped around the branches. There’s no way to get them off without taking everything off. My husband found a strand at the store and I just wound around the bottom, but of course, they are the LED lights being sold everywhere and are brighter than the top.
A neighbor who hails from Sweden had the prettiest tree – a live tree, large, with these big white frosted bulbs and red ornaments only – it looked stunning so I copy that for my porch tree.
Do you have a flat roof? Easier for the sleigh to land. Are you in a Southwestern area?
Bingo. Plus, our daughters were born in Russia. It made sense at the time . . .
The term “colored” is dated and has racist connotations. Use “Lights of Color” instead . . .
You should each decorate your own tree and submit the results next year. Here at the Harris Hacienda we have white lights on the big tree and lights of color on the three small trees (no one can accuse me of under decorating). The outside lights are also colored this year. I like both and we have plenty of each.
My wife is more enthusiastic about Christmas than I am, so she does all the Christmas decorating. She likes multi-colored lights and I’m fine with that. If we had to get new lights and she asked my opinion, though, I’d vote for all yellow lights. I think the yellow LED lights are the nicest complement to the pine green color of the tree itself.
I’ve been meaning to take pictures of these trees for the past couple of years. These are the trees on CPR Ogden rail yards property. Every year they light them up, and tonight I stopped to take a few photos. The warmest night of the week -21… But as you can see there was not a breath of wind moving… So a nice night. (granted if you’re dressed for it)
Merry Christmas!