Just For Yucks

This is the personal blog of a stange entity called Dave Bealer, who has been publishing his humorous observations online since 1992 - before Al Gore invented the Internet. Dave's writings have been known to cause anger, confusion, and even the occasional laugh. Read the following at your own risk...

Saturday, December 24, 2005

White is the New Red & Green

For some reason white Christmas lights are all the rage these days. This is a far cry from my childhood days in the 60s when most Christmas lights were red and green, with some blue and yellow mixed in for variety. Christmas lights rarely flashed - it was a big deal when they did.

Last year everyone was dismayed (well, those who cared were), by the hoax perpetrated by Alek Komarnitsky of Colorado, who claimed that you could turn his home's Christmas lights on and off remotely via the web. Well, Alek is back this year, and this time he claims it's all for real. Either way, you can check out his website here.

Most people don't have 26,000 lights up for the holidays, like Alek Komarnitsky claims to have. But flashing lights and all kinds of gadgets are the order of the day. My neighborhood has an amazing number of all-white light displays this year.

It appears the white light craze began with the "icicle lights" that were very popular a few years ago. But back then the white icicle lights hanging from the roof edge were accompanied by colorful lights on the trees and shrubbery down in the yard.

The big thing this year seems to be those white "spiral trees" and motorized reindeer made of some white-coated wire material and lined with tiny white lights. There were one or two of these around the past year or two, but this year their population has simply exploded! Most people with these gadgets seem to have chosen small white lights for their trees and shrubs as well.

I wonder how much of it is southerners compensating for the usual lack of a white Christmas with white Christmas lights. Whatever the reason, I find it a bit boring.

By now I'm sure some readers are thinking something along the lines of "Alright, smart guy, what do you put up for Christmas decoration, if you're so smart!" Okay, if you want to be that way about it, I'll tell you.

I have no internal Christmas decorations, except for Christmas cards which are placed on top of the living room television when they are received, and knocked off by my cat, Rusty, within a day or two.

I have one Christmas decoration for external display - a rack of small multi-colored sequential flashing lights displayed in an upstairs window of my spare bedroom. These lights are not arrayed around the perimeter of the window - but left in the white plastic storage rack they came in from the factory. The rack is placed on top of an overturned facial tissue box and leaned up against the window with the lights facing outwards. The final effect, when seen from ground level, is kind of like a wreath of lights flashing in varying patterns. At least that's what I think it looks like - none of the neighbors have told me it looks ridiculous. But perhaps they're just being polite.

If I can find my digital camera and charger within the next week I may take a picture of it and post it here for your perusal.

Whatever your holiday display preferences, have a very Merry Christmas!

Dave Bealer

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1 Comments:

At 7:00 PM, Blogger alekkomar said...

Dave,

Thanx for the mention about my 26,000 controllable christmas lights. I'd like to add that there is an optional "donate for Celiac Disease" button on the web site ... and so far, over $3,000 has been raised for the University of Maryland which is probably just down the street from 'ya.

Merry Christmas,
alek

 

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