Every holiday season I get a fresh wreath from my money guy. I really appreciate it, because I love the fresh greens. I got this year’s wreath last Saturday and put it up that day. This morning I noticed that our across-the-walkway neighbors put up a wreath for the first time. I like to think they saw ours and liked it.
How do you feel about Christmas decorations (in particular, outdoor lights) that few people will see
We have a modest amount of outdoor lights that the world sees, but inside we really deck the halls. I view it as two different spheres: decorations intended primarily to make us feel good, and decorations intended to please others. And yes, there can be some overlap.
Indeed I do! But I do get peeved this time of year when it gets dark in the daytime.
Well said. I sleep 8 hours. That is plenty of dark for anywhere year round.
If you have more money than ambition you can now hire a company to install/maintain your christmas lights.
https://www.shackshine.com/services/christmas-light-installation/
You think that’s new?
Commercial and residential buildings have been paying seasonal businesses to put up Xmas lights since before you were born. This very evening I drove by a high rise condo with 2 cherry-pickers out front festooning the 100 foot tall trees with Xmas lights. That’s not a DIY task for a janitor with a step ladder.
Hell, I was paying for Xmas lights to be installed on my house 25 years ago. And it wasn’t a new service then.
I was never aware that people could hire someone to install their Christmas lights/decorations before. I saw some light installation advertisement signs recently on a trip to Seattle and it was new to me.
I always assumed that businesses hired someone to do that kind of work but didn’t realize residential customers had that option until recently.
But I am not into hanging lights and decorations so I must have never really noticed it started a long time ago.
Last year a guy hired to hang lights on a house on my town was electrocuted. His ladder (or pole?) touched the power line, and he was between the power line and ground. He was still alive when emergency personnel showed up, so perhaps he survived. I once gave a presentation with a guy missing a finger, and we asked him about it over drinks, later. He’s been electrocuted when the mast of a boat he’d been sailing (or maybe rigging to sail) touched a power line. He said his flesh caught on fire. But the morphine was really good. And he obviously lived to tell the tale.
Anyway, i hadn’t really thought about all the people hired to put lights on houses around here until i read that news article.
Houses in my new subdivision (I just moved) have under eve lights. Mounted on the soffits I guess. They come in all colors. These aren’t x-mas lights, though I’m sure they can be changed to colors red and green.
There are some wild ones around here. You might see purple and yellow one day, and green flashing the next. A lot are just white. Sort of lights up the area around the house a little bit.
It’s… interesting, and kinda fun really. We don’t have them.
You can usually tell the houses that have had their lights put up professionally compared to the regular schlubs (like me) that try to do it themselves. The professional ones are always perfectly symmetrical where symmetry is intended. Lights are always separated at perfect intervals. For my tastes, it comes off as almost too sterile. I take delight in seeing the imperfections or when Frosty or Rudolph edge their way into nativity scenes.
It’s definitely a luxury purchase and especially so for a large house. So depending on how much you (any you) hang out in e.g. country club suburbia, you’ll see it going on everywhere every year, or probably never.
Back when we were kids you’d get neighborhoods where middle class folks got competitive about DIYing the fanciest decs and most lights. Nowadays the demi-fatcats compete on the basis of how much they spent to have their houses and front yards festooned.
I live in a pricey neighborhood, and near very pricey neighborhoods. At some point i realized that the lights on full-sized trees, and the string of lights along the ridge of the roof, were probably installed by professionals, and not the homeowner.
And of course, the supermarket hires people to cover the little trees on the sidewalk with extensive lights for the whole winter season.
Professional light installation is BIG business. They will install yours, or for more money, they’ll install theirs, which not only means investment in said lights but storing them; storage units year round as it would be foolish to rent for 10 months & have it rented out from under you in Dec & then you having nowhere to return them to in Jan.
I’m guessing a lot of it is landscapers or pool companies picking up a second “career” in their offseason
We currently have a house of horrors leading up to Halloween, including a few outdoor surprises (unearthed skeleton with lighted skull, sound-activated zombie heads). Few other people will experience them or our planned Xmas decorations, but it’s enough that we enjoy them.
I’m going to remain off topic to share an anecdote. When I was a kid in the late 60’s my dad was a lineman. A coworker of his was having a party and the power went out. Being a lineman, he decided he’d go fix it and impress everyone. He climbed up a pole and ended up losing an arm. Needless to say… police and ambulance showing up was not condusive to a party.
Yikes!
Anyway, i prefer the decorations done by homeowners. Lights on the shrubs, not totally perfect. A tree seen through the window. A wreath. I enjoy other people’s Christmas decorations.