. . . on the most important issue of our times:
COLORED. You use COLORED lights, okay? C-O-L-O-R-E-D. Listen to Michele. Michele is right about this.
White lights are for yuppies.
White lights scream, "I was at Neiman's last Thursday and they had the most di-vine-ly elegant displays up for Winter Holidays . . . ."
White lights say, "As a celebration of our country's rich tapestry of varying religious and ethnic origins I shall put up lights that reflect no one particular tradition or heritage, but that rather embrace and include and pay homage to all of them: White, the only color that holds within itself all other colors."
White lights say, "Why yes, thank you; in fact I am one of those people who shops at Crate & Barrel and buys all that 'distressed' shit posing as actual furniture there."
Oh, yuppies, yuppies dear, please do shove all that nonsense straight up your rectums. Think of it as a distressed high colonic! You could be first on your block to have one. Precious, isn't it?
No, I don't like the white lights too well. Alas, I live in Dallas, Poseur Capital of the Americas. Easily a third of the population in Dallas is white trash trying desperately to convince everyone that they ARE NOT EITHER white trash. They do this by making fun of their small-town relatives and how cuhnnn-tree they are. (I am sorry that looks like a bad word when it's typed out phonetically like that, but that's how it's pronounced around here.) So you have a lot of people shunning multicolored lights for fear of looking white trash, and then they open their mouths and WHOA!--All the Neiman Marcus catalogs in the world can't hide those roots, honey. You can take the girl out of the trailer . . . .
Hate the white lights. Hate 'em. What are white lights but a bunch of little teeny light bulbs? Ordinary, colorless, soulless light bulbs, no more joyous or celebratory than the 60-watt sitting in the lamp on my desk right now?
Don't bother putting them up at all. Really, just don't. I'd rather you put up a tacky dancing Santa than those tasteful, restrained, less-is-more, austere-to-the-point-of-ennui white lights.
Posted by Ilyka at November 30, 2004 01:52 AM in hell is other peopleI agree with you...white lights are so boring. I mean, why bother? Yes, Christmas lights should have colors. Lots of colors.
Hear, hear! Colors rule!
Posted by: Dr Alice at November 30, 2004 03:03 AMi new you were a colored girl after all.
p.s. are the blinky plugs ok or just tacky, i like to use two in different places in the sequence of strands, just for variety of course.
Posted by: rammer at November 30, 2004 04:25 AMThank you for addressing this important issue.
I think it's time to revolt.
Posted by: michele at November 30, 2004 11:41 AMI'll make one defense of them: in outdoor displays, when there's snow, the white lights look nice strung up in trees, outlining the stripped branches. Not Christmas trees, I mean the regular oak trees and whatnot on people's lawns that have lost all their leaves. With a peppering of snow the white lights look nice.
And okay, maybe on the trim on outdoor store displays. Maybe.
Posted by: Dean Esmay at November 30, 2004 02:04 PMOne more exception: icicle lights.
Now, on to more important matters... how do you feel about musical lights?? Bubble lights?
Posted by: Ith at November 30, 2004 07:23 PMI love blinky lights, but the musical ones drive me nuts without the music.
Tasteful Christmas is a terrible oxymoron. Christmas is all about tack and kitsch and excess, dammit.
I hate those shiny fake fruit in muted colors, too.
Posted by: caltechgirl at November 30, 2004 07:33 PMI still miss the chile lights I had when I lived in Texas. *sigh*
I. Have. Multi-colored lights. With. TWO. TWO. TWO COLORS per bulb.
Hah!
I think we agree on this issue, as well.
::: curtsies :::
Posted by: Margi at November 30, 2004 11:00 PMI have to have the old painted bulbs on all of my Christmas light strings, inside and out. Yes, they get hot as hell and are probably, no, definitely a fire hazard on a dry Christmas tree. It just has to be that way.
Posted by: Rob at December 1, 2004 04:56 AMEr, I'm doing white lights this year. Like every year since I moved. See, the colored (that's COLORED, not COLOURED for all those idjits at work that keep resetting my settings to English (U.K.) lights peg me at twenty paces as an American. I don't really need to be pointed at and stared at due to my gaudy display of blinking colored lights.
I'm saving that for the enormous blow-up Santa, after all.
Posted by: Helen at December 1, 2004 10:29 PMCan we not also dismiss the brown wicker lawn reindeer wrapped in white lights?
Posted by: Val Ann C at December 1, 2004 11:42 PM