And I already feel inadequate. Why? Please see my film last year.
Seriously, they couldn’t even wait until December 1st? They need to start mocking me while my turkey is still warm? Christmas cheer, my ass. I demand retribution*.
What are your neighborhoods looking like, Dopers? Anything crazy festive yet?
*I take retributive justice in the form of delicious and festive cookies.
Nothing yet, but I’ve already purchased enough lights to send my power bill up 986 milliGriswolds for the month of December.
Quite a few people with lights up and lit already, but I saw some people with them up about a month ago at least.
I’m okay with it at this time since it is the weekend before the start of December, that and we don’t have to contend with the turkey holiday right now. That was a month and a half ago. 
I’ve installed everything, but they’re not lit up yet.
Plugging everything in takes place tomorrow (Sunday) and then the grand light up will probably take place tomorrow night so my youngest can be part of the fun.
Daylight savings means it only gets dark around 9:00pm here.
This is last years effort.
This year is the same basic pattern, but a few things moved around.
I’m in a dorm in the UK. I’ve seen Christmas stuff in supermarkets for weeks, but no decorations anywhere. Walking around the neighborhoods surrounding the Uni, you can’t tell Christmas is coming at all.
Suits me.
I say any time between Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Eve is fine.
I do hope the OP is in jest though. Remember not everyone lives in a house. I live in a basement flat and so I can’t put up Christmas lights, but I do love to walk around the neighborhoods and enjoy looking at other’s lights.
That’s my advice if the OP is at all serious. So what? Don’t put up decorations at all and just enjoy your neighbor’s lights. The quickest way to kill happiness is to make it into a competition
Your video is hilarious! It really does look like a neighborhood competition and these folks probably have been adding pieces for years, so don’t sweat it.
The music would get on my nerves after a little while.
I understand your feelings of inadequecy, but class wins over obscenity. You have class, mamma!
When I lived in Cleveland, I used to drive through Beachwood, a suburb that is about 95% Jewish, in search of houses with Christmas decorations. (I’m Jewish, FWIW.) There were always a few houses with trees in the window, but that was it; no grand displays.
Oddly, even though it was predominantly Reform and Conservative Jews that lived in Beachwood, I saw very few houses with blue Hanukkah lights. The Hanukkah displays seemed to increase in frequency the further one got from Beachwood, up to a point.
I love seeing blue lights and menorahs in neighborhoods I call “the diaspora of the diaspora”; the opposite end of town from where most Jews live in a region.
Here in Saskatchewan, if you haven’t put up lights already, you probably won’t - we tend to put them up early because you never know when the snow and the cold will close you down. (And they stay up until the snow is gone in April.)
Earliest we ever did them was Labour Day.
My neighborhood doesn’t really do them - I don’t think. You can barely see my house from the road, so I don’t bother.
Diosa, if I were living across from them, I’d sue them. I get a headache just looking at the clip. I’m sure those lights would flash even through blinds.
I put my Christmas lights up the week-end before Christmas. One year, I put them up on the 24th in the afternoon.
I live in a small complex of 6 two-story apartments. All of them have large plate-glass doors opening onto balconies.
I was in the car park at the back of the complex last night, and was rather amazed to see, through their window, that one of my neighbors apparently already has their Christmas tree up. I could think of no other explanation for the 8-foot tall pyramid of white lights that was visible in the room.
It’s obviously not a live tree, but Jesus, i think that’s the earliest i’ve ever seen one put up. It’s still November, fercrissakes.
I know a few people that put up the tree on Thanksgiving weekend every year. I think mostly it’s because they have Friday off from work anyway so there’s some extra time to get it done, or something. They all have artificial trees, so there’s no issue with the tree drying out or whatever.
Still feels too early to me, though.
Some people just leave their lights on their houses all year (they don’t turn them on during the year, that is - they just don’t take them down when Christmas is over, because of the weather). Around here, the lights for thems that have them up get turned on the day after Thanksgiving. Those with kids put up those grotesque inflatable giant balloons that lie there flat on the lawn during the day! … The Garage Dweller across the street used to have his house lit up like a Mexican massage parlor every night during the holidays, but I think he’s had a financial setback and hasn’t turned on his gaudy display last couple years. … Here’s http://uglychristmaslights.com
I assumed it was blatantly obvious I was joking.
Thanks! But my dear, I’m like school on Saturday: no class ;). Oh, and the music wasn’t so bad, they only did it a half an hour a night.
Bah humbug. Like I said above, they only flashed their lights for 30 minutes a night. My shutters block out the light just fine and my windows totally block out the sound. Not bad at all.
I know I’d be that hot mess that just leaves my lights up all year, but I can’t, as I think the HOA would swoop down upon me like those bad things in Harry Potter (dementors?) I will be using the phrase ‘Mexican Massage Parlor’ to describe at minimum three things today though, so thank you.
Mein Herr and son put them up yesterday, mainly because it was clear and fairly warm. That’s our main criteria – finding a time when we’re not already committed to something and the weather’s not crappy. We don’t have much of a neighborhood, but the houses we can see across the woods and pastures have a few lights up.
Our Christmas Tree went up Tuesday, and I worked on the outside lights today. I have a couple of reasons for doing it early:
1.) I’m pregnant, due in January, and every day I get a little less “able bodied.” I gotta do what I can while I can. Tuesday I had a few hours of freedom from my 2-year-old, I needed to do something productive, but I couldn’t work on the nursery because the contractors were putting down the new carpet. So I put up the tree instead.
2.) Today was a beautiful day. I got to work outside and it gave my toddler a chance to romp in the sunshine while I was being productive.
3.) Christmas, IMHO, officially starts the day after Thanksgiving, and it only lasts a month. Might as well get the lights up and enjoy them for as long as you can!
Diosa, we have a house a couple of neighborhoods over that does that lights-coordinated-with-the-music thing every year, but they’ve worked it so that the music comes through the car radio as you watch. I’ve always thought it was pretty cool, but then I’m not one of the neighbors who has to live with tons of cars blocking the street as they drive by to see the display. I definitely have sympathy.
I took a walk tonight, and I’d say less than 10% of people who usually put up lights have them up. Every year I take the dog to different parts of the neighborhood every night to watch. The season doesn’t really start until December 1, when this guy a few blocks away put out his five boxes with mechanical Santas, animals, presents, the works. Better than most of the department store windows in San Francisco.
Is this your house on the right?
Today is the first Sunday of Advent. This means that every house in Norway will, at some point, magically sprout a lit star and a seven-armed electric candelabra in the window. It happens every year and this foreigner is entertained every year.
Outdoor lights are less common and at any rate the major Christmas decorations don’t appear until one or two weekends before Christmas.