The Spirit of the Season

What is wrong with this picture?

We need to talk about this now, before we drag out the boxes and boxes of lights and decorations and start hanging things.

I appreciate all Christmas decorating styles. I do. I like those plastic Santas and reindeer that perch on roofs with no chimneys, even though there is no point in Santa landing on a roof with no chimney. (In real life, he lands in the yard and slips in through the bathroom window, of course.) I am even okay with those gi-normous blow-up snowmen, even in Florida. It lacks verisimilitude, but I have a live and let live attitude when it comes to Christmas decorations -- in other people's yards.

I love lights -- the twinkly little kind that look like stars when you squint. When I was a young teenager, I strung white twinkle lights around my bedroom and turned them on at night because, you know, they look like stars when you squint. So during the Christmas season, I'm usually the one who makes everyone pile into the car to drive around all night looking at lights.

But.

I am not a fan of mixing colors and sizes of lights. And when I say I'm not a fan, I mean I really hate it. If you are going to use red lights, then only use red lights. Don't be mixing in the blues and the whites and the random other assortment of colors in there. It's trashy. There. I said it. Trashy.

See we were doing okay last year when we started with the nice white icicle lights and the pretty white lights on the porch Christmas tree. And I held my tongue to preserve family harmony when someone said we were putting blue lights around the front door. I thought to myself, "Well, if I can contain the blue lights to just around the door, maybe I can live with that to save my marriage." But when the red lights came out of the shopping bag to be strung up on the front steps, I nearly fainted. I was mortified. And during the four weeks or so that those lights were up, every time I drove into the driveway, I was sooooo embarrassed. I even had to endure a Christmas party with many, many people in attendance who assumed I selected, or at the very least approved, the trashy assortment of lights. It was almost more than I could bear. And I refuse to do it this year.

If blue lights go up around the door, they will magically be white by the following morning. If someone pulls red lights out of a shopping bag and says, "Hey -- these will look great hanging along the roof!" -- the red lights will accidently be crushed beneath the wheels of Mace's toddler car.

I'm taking a stand this year. It doesn't matter to me if the lights are white, blue, red, salmon, peach, or lime green, so long as all the lights are white, blue, red, salmon, peach, or lime green. Join me in the mono-chromatic Christmas light movement. It's the classy choice (and when the lights are all the same color, they look a lot more like stars when you squint).