A light rant

I've always found it difficult to get into the Christmas spirit when it's not cold and snowy. The first time I remember being somewhere warm for Christmas was in California when I was nine years old. We were living on the boat, so this posed two problems- how does Santa get around without snow and how would he get into the boat? Maybe I didn't believe in Santa by that point, but I think the questions are still valid.

Anyway, as I've gotten older and spent more time in warmer climates around the holidays, I've always found it fascinating to see what people decide to decorate. It goes beyond the rooflines, fences, and trees. I think without snow enabling the end goal of a few inches softly lit from below by small colored lights tastefully strung up, the new goal becomes bright! lights! scenery! lookitlookitlookit! I see fire hydrants, mailboxes, cacti, cars, dog houses, and whatever else happens to be near a light socket (though sometimes not even that). And then I guess when they run out of things, people start putting lit up deer, trees, nativities, santas, and various woodland animals. The "snow globe" decorations flabbergast me. So imagine my amusement when out of the heavy fog we've had over the weekend, I looked off the balcony to see this:

Our local water tower has become a victim. I find it funny, actually, because in all the recent fog, it looked like a hovering, alien-green blob.

I admit it, I'm a Christmas light snob. While you probably don't have much pull in the weather department, you do have a lot to do with how your yard is decorated. Tacky or spartan (or not at all, for that matter!), just do it right. None of these trees that have been lit up only around the trunk or look like you just did a Spidey throw and hoped that all the lights would get caught in the branches! And how do you convince yourself that only decorating half of the house (and not necessarily contiguously) is also ok? Splurge and buy one or two more strings of lights so that your entire roofline is lit up (not with alternating colored and white lights either).

Unless you have hemianopsia, all these "let's decorate half" people just don't have a reason. Please, for the love, don't arbitrarily decorate only half of anything with Christmas lights!