Morning news and Christmas displays

[John Smith]

Turned on our local news this morning to catch an interesting story.

Seems as a result of Covid, many people are investing considerably more money, and hiring people, to put up more elaborate Christmas decorations.

I'm not, as you all know, a religious man, but I'd have to believe their Christ would rather they put this money and effort into helping the needy.

[Jim Mahan]

I noticed last night that, like us, three of the other eight houses on the block have taken the day after T-Day to put up their Christmas lights outside, and they already have a decorated tree lit up in front of the living room window. We put up a single strand across the top of the porch. She won't let me use the extension ladder to get a string up on the roof gable over the porch I built with the same extension ladder.

We have a faux tree in a box that sits on a corner table in the living room, that we've used for the last two decades. Later, when my construction repair project is done, and the columns are all painted white again, we'll wrap each of the three columns with a broad scarlet ribbon, candy-cane fashion, on the top, thinner part of the columns, and we'll have an evergreen wreath on the front door.

I am nostalgic for, even though I didn't live through it, the time when, according to some early film and books, people went out to cut down a tree for the parlor and light candles—on Christmas Eve—after work. And then in morning, everyone gets a gift, the kids get pajamas or socks with the one present and everyone segues to another roast dinner.

I have had several December trips into the mountains to cut a Christmas tree, with a USDA Forest Service permit, five bucks. One year when I lived in southern Oregon and the then wife worked for the above agency, we cut one for our house and three more and mailed them to my brothers' houses.

No doubt the real decorating enthusiasts, the ones who can't see past 'the holidays,' and the VISA bill pending, will continue to compete for biggest, most elaborate, and most wasteful, display of colored lights and traditional Christmas fiction characters rendered as blow-up Disney balloon figures, with a mini compressor running during the display periods, and red, white and green holiday heroes, dead in a pool of flat plastic on the lawn, when the air pressure falls off.

Our neighbor across the street puts a couple of wire sculpture reindeer with white twinkly lights on his lawn. I think he puts a Santa in the sleigh on the roof, too, in the same white wire with lights. He's the guy who installed solar LED path lights along the flagstones from the street to his porch, and has a motion sensor to turn on the light after dark, but when the light comes on, it pulses like a strobe.

Remember when the first OPEC oil embargo happened in the seventies, and suddenly we were all energy conscious and the opposite effect happened, when, all over the country, people responded by eliminating outside decorative lights altogether?

[John Smith]

We used to live in a third floor walk up. We had two artificial trees in the basement. Advantage of the big one is when tree went up, the big box was a good place to hide the presents.

When the kids got older, someone gave us a slightly smaller tree, so we had two in the basement.

Our girls, being older, had boyfriends. Oldest daughter and her boyfriend came over and brought the one tree up, set it up, and decorated. They left. Half hour later, the other daughter and her boyfriend came in. She liked the other tree better, so they took the one that was up down and brought the other tree up and decorated.

Youth? I miss it.

[Jim Mahan]

Besides folks staying home and doing more lights and stuff, I saw an article that said more people are reverting to natural trees and the tree farms sales are way up over last year.

When I did in-house advertising for a tech firm that made particle counters, I shared the big office space with some of the optical engineers. The company of about fifty employees put a tree up in the half dozen departments. After the Friday of the week after Christmas, with a half day off and booze served in the cafeteria, the engineers would take their tree out to an empty space behind the main building, douse it with a gallon of some kind of lab chemistry and torch it. It would go up in a yewage flash. Smart idiots. Drunken office party and bonfire fifty yards from a wooded area. Sometimes I think it's amazing humanity has lasted this far past the discovery of gunpowder.

[amish rob]

Turned on our local news this morning to catch an interesting story.

Seems as a result of Covid, many people are investing considerably more money, and hiring people, to put up more elaborate Christmas decorations.

I'm not, as you all know, a religious man, but I'd have to believe their Christ would rather they put this money and effort into helping the needy.

By spending their money any way they can?