take down your freaking x-mas lights....

[bell]

i was out and about today running some errands and saw at least 6 houses which still had freaking christmas decorations up!!!!!!
TAKE THEM DOWN ALREADY!!!!

sorry for the rant

[masraum]

I see the Icicle lights up on houses year round these days. Lazy bastards. If you arent' going to take them down, don't put them up.

[craigster59]

I like the ones who leave the reindeer up on the roof in the hot July sun...

[stomachmonkey]

Hey, I left mine up one year. Must admit I felt like an idiot, until the next xmas. Then I felt like a genius.

It's tacky but sometimes life just gets in the way.

[id10t]

One year my sole xmas decoration out front was a single strand of lights running up a scraggly little pine in the front yard. Made pizza deliveries great - look for the xmas tree. Of course, unless I called for pizza I kept them turned off...

[HardDrive]

Ummmmmmm....Senator, I will neither confirm nor deny the existance of christmas lights on the railing of my deck. I plead the 5th!!!

[bell]

lights aren't really as noticable as the premade plastic reindeer and santa clauses.......that's what's bugging me

[ikarcuaso]

Thanks to my dad, I was raised to rip on homeowners with the year-round lights. It's become a pet peave of mine, like convertible drivers with the top down, but all the windows up! Ours are back in storage on New Year's day, hangover and all!

[Alan Cottrill]

oh no... I'm just early for next christmas!

[HardDrive]

Originally posted by ikarcuaso
It's become a pet peave of mine, like convertible drivers with the top down, but all the windows up!

Now why would I drive down I-5 with the windows down in my Boxster? So I can here the straight pipe exhaust on the harley next to me better?

[Porsche-O-Phile]

I wholeheartedly agree. I love "going topless" but only do it if I'm going on an open stretch of highway or around town. Sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic listening to white noise of freeway gridlock is not the way to enjoy having a convertable - that's a "top up, windows closed, a/c on, CD player jammin'" type of situation for me. I have a convertable to enjoy the feeling of wind in my hair and sun on my face - not baking my nuts off, inhaling the smell of a million exhaust pipes and being bombarded with the sound of mariarchi music crap that the 10,000 illegal aliens on the road surrounding me at that moment feel the need to blast at full volume.

I hate the look of a convertable with the windows up too, but there's a time and a place for everything. If you're in a situation where you can't put the top up, at least putting the windows up is a not-so-subtle form of rejection/dismissal for the other idiot driver/drivers or situation around you. Kinda' like body language, just with the car.

[911boost]

I am usually really good at taking them down, but we got hammered with snow this year. My neighbors can kiss my ass if they thought I was gonna risk falling off my snow covered roof taking down my lights. Now with that being said, I also use the clear rope lights, so it wasn't as noticeable. I took them down once the snow had melted.

+1 on not understanding the whole convertible top down and windows up.

Bill

[Z-man]

Nowadays, the 1,000,000 homes popping up in my area have the Christmas lights built into the house. The lights trace the edges of the roof and the peak. So all they have to do is flip a switch, and the lights are on. During the 'off season' you don't see the lights either.

That type of setup I can tolerate, but homes that have the icicle lights up year round, and the folks who insist on turning the lights on EVERY FREAKIN' night year round should be rounded up and placed in a nice poor white-trash trailer park.

Not that there's anything wrong with a nice poor-white-trash trailer park.

-Z-man.

[notfarnow]

I'll admit it: I still have a string of lights up on the peak of my roof.

You really don't see them, and they're awful handy when I'm getting pizza delivered.

"Just look for the ********* with the christmas lights on"

[fingpilot]

I took holy hell from my GF's two young daughters one year when living in Minnesnowta.

It started snowing on Halloween Day. We went trick-0r-treating in a blizzard. Got two houses each side. The Lion King costume had a frozen solid mane, and the ballerina skirt was solid by the time we got back.

We got 31 inches of snow in 30 hours. Needless to say, the Christmas lights did not go up that year. The following spring we found the Jack-o-Lanterns that had gone out on October 29th.

The following season, I was out stringing the lights mid-October. They did not come down for several years. Now, It's all I can do to get the boat decorated in early December, and lights back down first week of January. Wouldn't want to interfere with the sailing every weekend.

[many944s]

I have to admit, I was guilty this year....
I didn't get mine taken down 'til shortly after Valentine's Day. Of course, with a new baby in the house, I had plenty of excuses. I have to laugh though, as my neighbor (who is trying to sell his house, none the less) still has a plastic Santa strapped to his chimney!

-Nick

[Hugh R]

I have a gabled house and years ago I borrowed an aerial lift and installed pulleys and plastic coated steel cable and turnbuckles and made a "flagpole" rope system, inside the gables so you can't see them. Now I just pull the lights up using duct tape every few feet to keep them from sagging. Adjust the turnbuckles to take up the slack and its no longer too big a hassle.

[cowtown]

That reminds me...gotta get that dead tree out of the living room.

[Porsche-O-Phile]

Didn't bother putting 'em up this year so I didn't have to take 'em down. Easier, simpler. Probably do the same thing next year. Screw it.

Here's the part I find hilarious: How many people/businesses that spend a little extra money on EnergyStar-compliant fixtures, LEED certifications, green building practices or energy conservation measures end up blowing any benefit gained thereby by throwing up silly holiday lighting?

Not being a scrooge - just wonderin'.

[Hugh R]

I read months ago that a string of the old big bulb ones would cost about $1 for a month to run, that the little ones would cost about 10 cents and the LED ones that came out in the last year or so about 1 cent.