I pulled the plug on all of our Christmas lights on Tuesday, but didn’t get around to start pulling them down until today. I’m not fanatical about a cutoff of January 6th and I’m not sure when I picked up the Twelfth Night tradition (if that’s what it is) but I have noticed that it’s happened enough to not be a coincidence. Maybe some time I’ll have to ask myself about that.
After having all of the lights up for a few weeks, it’s startling every year how dark the yard seems after they’re gone. When the dog goes out (repeatedly) for her evening constitutionals, it’s jarring for the first few nights because I’m still expecting to see them. It’s not just the amount of light, but also just the spectacle and color.
For the most part it’s been cloudy or hazy for days here in Southern California. Most nights, with or without the Christmas lights on, we’ve been barely able to see the moon, let alone any stars. But tonight it was clear. The winds are blowing again, the fire danger is high, and the stars were bright. Jupiter’s up at sundown and quite bright, and Orion is always a welcome sight for me. We really could have used them at Halloween, but you can’t argue with celestial mechanics. At least, you can’t argue and win.
For the first time in three or four years we didn’t have any of our Christmas lights stolen or vandalized. I can’t imagine who would steal or rip up Christmas lights, or why, but I guess it probably made sense to whoever did it.
There are a few very broad “themes” in our Christmas lights. Red, white, & blue lights by the flag. Big lights along the roof line and around the windows. White icicles along the gutters. All white lights here. Colored lights there and there and there. White lights & stars up in the birch tree. Monochrome colored lights on the rose bushes at each end of the yard. Red and white lights spiraling around the palm tree, hopefully making it look somewhat like a candy cane.
The first year we had problems, after nearly twenty years without any issues at all, someone swiped several of the small monochrome colored strings of lights off of the rose bushes. They’re right next to the sidewalk, so I guess that made them a target of opportunity. But it was a pain because those types of lights (monochrome colored) are difficult to find and replace.
So the next year, we started using little nylon tie wraps to attach those lights to the rose bush branches. Again, someone tried to swipe them, but this time found it to be harder. They may have also gotten scratched up pretty good by the rose bushes. (Go get ’em, rose bushes! ATTACK!) So they went postal on the bush and the string, actually managing to rip both to shreds with their bare hands.
All rightey, then! Merry Christmas!
Last year, we again locked down the lights on the rose bushes and they were left alone. But several strings of C7 and C9 bulbs were vandalized. The red & white lights on the palm tree as well as the big lights around the garage door all had a handful of bulbs unscrewed and stolen, maybe two dozen bulbs in all. These aren’t that hard to replace, but it’s still annoying. Again, all of the lights stolen were down at a height where they were within easy reach, so I’m guessing it was kids on a dare or some such thing. Still, geez, who in hell steals Christmas lights?!
I hope they got coal in their stockings.
There’s a bit of a sense of violation to the whole thing. Granted, not as bad as when I’ve had my car broken into and thousands of dollars of stuff and my briefcase stolen, but still… We work hard to put the lights up and make them look nice and we get lots of nice comments from folks around the neighborhood. While the total cost of everything stolen to date is maybe $25 or so, it’s the principle of the thing.
Principle is all well and good, but so is common sense. Is it worth it to spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars on security in order to protect $25 in Christmas lights? Or even ten times that many?
On the other hand, how much would it cost to hook up some web cams to monitor the yard? Motion-triggered video capture is built into some of the software that Logitech supplies with their cameras and I’ve got a couple of “spare” computers gathering dust here. Even if the police wouldn’t give a damn, it would be great to just print up the pictures and post them in the yard for some stranger shaming. (Trust me, in Los Angeles, even with hard evidence, if you’re not dead, a celebrity, or the property crime doesn’t result in thousands of dollars in losses, LAPD won’t even bother taking a report. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt.)
Whatever. For this year, the yard is dark, the garage is again stuffed to bursting with holiday trappings, and our electric bill will drop to normal.
Until Thanksgiving. Two hundred and eighty-eight days to go.
We Love The Stars Too Fondly 